TL; DR: You would think we visited enough distilleries in our summer holidays, but we managed to stick another one in at the last minute, while on the way home. Moffat, one of the newest in the Scottish Borders. Very experimental at this stage, it’ll be very interesting to see how their malt ends up being! 

After visiting a couple of English distilleries, and a few more down in Wales, we couldn’t end our holidays without a Scottish one, right? However, this distillery visit was not in the plans until the night before. After leaving Wales we briefly stopped in the cute town of Chester, where we had a half pint in a hidden pub called The Cavern of the Curious Gnome (to get there you need to go the balconies, the Rows, and the pub is above a wine bar that you need to cross).

Afterwards, we drove straight north, while having some sandwiches we’d prepared earlier. We spent the night at a farm-brewery, just before Lancaster, the Farm Brew Co (found on SearchForSites): if you have some pints there, they let you stay…And their beers are delicious, so we had a couple each and bought another few to bring home. While there, we were browsing on our phones, and realised that the Moffat Distillery had just opened to visitors. We’d already heard about them, and Moffat was on our road back to Leith, so why not? We booked right away!

In the morning we left early, unlike the sunny dusk the day before, it was a very cloudy and grey day. We stopped in rainy Carlisle for breakfast and to pay a visit to the House of Malt (they have very good deals sometimes), and then we drove straight to Moffat. The village looked very nice and quiet, like many others in the south of Scotland, with a large central square with shops, restaurants and cafes. The distillery is just outside the village heading south, in a wide clearing just off Old Carlisle Rd.

The building is clearly new, a black barn with a glass wall covering all the entrance side. We could see the visitor centre on the right, while on the left we could glimpse at the production area, although we could not see the stills as usually happens with new distilleries. As we entered the building, we realised how everything is new. The main room is very large, at the moment occupied by the visitor centre: a bar in the centre, the bottle shop on the left, some sofas on the right, and a grand piano just behind the bar.

Alex (the bartender/guide) told us about the company, Dark Sky Spirits, founded in 2017 by Nick and Erin Bullard, focusing on sourced products. The name comes from Moffat being one of the first towns in Europe installing low-impact street lighting to decrease light pollution. A few years later they decided to start a distillery: permission was granted and land was purchased in 2020, ground was broken in 2021 and distilling from 2023, really just started. We soon moved to the production area, where Nick (founder and distiller) talked us through the process. They source the barley (Lauriet variety) in Fife, where it is also malted. The operation is very small at the moment (max capacity only about 12,000 litres per annum of alcohol), as they are in an experimental phase. Experiments include mixing regular and toasted/heavily toasted barley, brewer’s mashing (ie lower temperatures to retain sweetness), fermentation times (now fairly short at 39-42hrs, but planning for longer ones), and spirit cut (eg low wines at 29.5%, much higher than the usual ~20% in most distilleries).

The mash tun and the washbacks are less than 500l (they use American yeast), while the wash and spirit stills are respectively 350 and 60 litres and at the moment, they sit outside in a container. Their main characteristic is that they are wooden fired, a unique feature among Scottish whisky distilleries.  They approximately fill one barrel per week, and mainly source barrels from Tennessee.

Back inside, we spotted some of their casks in a “temporary warehouse”, and saw where the definitive stills will be in the future – now there is the gin still (200l) and the bottling equipment. Blending and bottling has been the main activity for Dark Sky Spirits, indeed. In 2020 they developed a range called Auld Special Edition, including two blended malts (#2 Spicy 13y, and #3 Fruity 15y, both 48%) and two single malts (#1 Smoky 16y, 47% and recently a 26y from Speyside Distillery, bottled at 45% and distilled in 1997). They also produce the Moffat blended malt (40%, NAS), recently replaced by the Doorhamer (blended malt, 40%, NAS), the Moffat gin and a series of gin liqueurs. Moreover, they bottle expressions for local events, like the Stranraer Oyster Festival or the Moffat Eagle Festival (this year both blended malts at 46%). All their products seem to be reasonably priced (still now, after the August increase in taxation).

Finally, we had a taster of their products at the bar (the tasting room was not ready, in our understanding): Moffat blended malt, Moffat gin and some gin liqueurs. However, Alex was nice enough to pour us wee samples of their Smoky and Fruity whiskies, the latter being the winner for us. With that our visit finished, and we slowly drove through the south of Scotland to Leith. This distillery was one of the few that left us with more curiosity than before we entered, honestly. It is going to be very interesting in the coming years to see how this distillery will develop, and in particular to understand how the wooden fire still will affect the whisky, in texture and taste.

Until next time, slainte!

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Moffat Distillery Tour

Price: £20.00 pp (July 2023)

Duration: 1hr 15min (on paper, but Nick got carried away and it was actually longer)

Tasting: Moffat gin, the Moffat Blended Malt (40%, NAS, 2536 bottles), and gin liqueurs

Target: tourists and craft distilling geeks

Value for money: ok

Highlights: the wooden fired stills

Recommended: if you’re driving on the A74, a stop won’t hurt 😉

Link: https://www.moffatdistillery.com/

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