Less than 6 weeks ago Grasmere Distillery invited prospective Founders Club members to secure a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of owning a cask from the distillery’s first-ever production of its inaugural single malt whisky.
The total allocation of just 45 casks, priced at £2,500 each, has since been snapped up by whisky enthusiasts from across the region, successfully underpinning the next three years of whisky production at the distillery as owners Paul and Beth begin to focus on building up their cask stock for bottling.
This means they will lay down at least 150 casks, for maturation during the next three to four years, before the resulting whisky is then bottled and sold commercially. As whisky production increases in the fullness of time, it is anticipated the distillery will produce 50 finished casks of newly made spirit each year, or the equivalent of 10,000 litres of whisky.
Even when bottle sales begin, the distillery will deliberately restrict the volume of whisky they produce. The idea is to enable them to set casks aside allowing small parcels of whisky to maturate for six years and more.
Paul Abbott co-founder of Grasmere Distillery commented: ”We are all thrilled that the Founders Club has been such a runaway success, and we can’t wait to travel on a journey of discovery with those who have invested with us. Ultimately there’s no great secret to what we do. We are a true grain-to-glass distillery, making spirits from scratch from our beer right in the heart of Grasmere, a stone’s throw from the lake shore.
This is a provenance that can’t be bought, and it resonated with those who have chosen to support the launch of our Founders Club. We never anticipated such an enthusiastic response for one second. But clearly, people get what we are about, like what we are doing, and can see the direction of travel and the vision behind what we are aiming to produce.”
Now that each of the 45 Founder’s Club members has secured their casks, the distillery team will begin filling the first batch of casks in early September, the spirit will then be set aside to mature for a minimum of three years.
Once it reaches that point it’s then up to the owner of each cask to decide what they want to do, including selling the contents on to the bottle trade, taking the cask to auction, or even leaving it in the distillery’s bonded warehouse to mature further for up to ten years.
In the interim, the Grasmere Distillery team is creating the spirit to fill twenty casks of their own, which they will then set aside for future releases, including their first release of bottled whisky.
For more information please visit: https://www.grasmeredistillery.com
