Filey Bay STR Red Wine Cask

The Distillery
Filey Bay is made at Spirit of Yorkshire, a farm-first distillery near Hunmanby on the East Riding coast — the county's first, and one of very few anywhere built by the people who grow the barley themselves. Founded by the Mellor family, longtime farmers before they were distillers, the whisky takes its name from the curve of coastline visible from the distillery window.
Every drop is single estate, field to bottle: 100% homegrown barley grown regeneratively, protecting the soil rather than stripping it. That choice shapes the spirit before a cask is even filled — light, creamy, faintly green-apple. First distilled in June 2016 and bottled from 2019, the distillery has spent a decade proving Yorkshire belongs in the serious whisky conversation.
The Release: STR Red Wine Cask
This isn't the whisky it used to be — deliberately. Once a limited, batch-numbered finish (Batch #4 being the last), it's now been promoted into Filey Bay's permanent core range to mark the distillery's tenth anniversary, alongside the Flagship and Moscatel Sherry Cask.
The step up is real. Rather than a one-off finish on younger stock, it's built solera-style: casks are continually backfilled with older whisky from the warehouse, so today's bottle carries more age and depth than any single batch before it. Bottled at a fuller 47.3%, up from 46%, it's a genuinely richer whisky — which is exactly why the batch number was dropped. This is the definitive version, not a limited experiment.
The casks are the technical heart of it: ex-red wine barriques shaved, toasted and re-charred — the "STR" method pioneered by the late Dr. Jim Swan, who consulted on the distillery's original setup. Shaving strips the wine-soaked outer layer, toasting draws out vanillin and spice, and re-charring tempers the tannin raw wine casks would otherwise dump into a delicate spirit. It coaxes colour and red fruit from the wood without ever overpowering Filey Bay's light, coastal character.
Tasting Notes
Colour: Deep amber with a rosé-gold blush at the rim — the STR treatment's clearest signature.
Nose: Warm biscuit and marzipan, with macerated summer berries pushing through — redcurrant and bramble rather than jam — over a faint coastal salinity.
Palate: Soft and rounded, malt sweetness of boiled sweets and toasted almond, before the wine cask takes hold — cherry, damson skin, a touch of clove. The extra maturation shows in a longer, more structured mid-palate than the old batches offered.
Finish: Medium, drying into oak spice and dark chocolate, with the red fruit lingering last.
Serve: Room temperature in a Glencairn; a few drops of water opens the fruit without thinning the body. Pairs well with lamb, game, or a good aged cheddar.