About Fielden ‘Whisky of England’:
Fielden is the English whisky that’s changing farming, field by field, harvest by harvest. What’s whisky got to do with farming? Everything. Whisky is an agricultural product, but most grain in England is grown industrially, with chemicals. Not on Fielden’s farms. Fielden is bringing England’s fields back to life by planting heritage grains that grew here centuries ago. Fielden’s farmers work with nature and never use chemicals. Instead, the grain grows in clover, a natural fertiliser. It means the soil is healthy. The grain grows tall and strong in wild and glorious fields. The whisky is full of the flavour of the fields. Fielden’s flagship Rye whisky launched in May 2024.
About Heritage Grain:
Fielden Whisky uses genetically diverse ‘field blends’ of heritage grains – revived from historical sources and grown sustainably on over 2200 acres in the UK. The distillery’s grain contributes to biodiversity and soil health in the English countryside.
This is the result of archaeobotanist John Letts’ lifelong research. John has spent decades sourcing, growing and bulking up heritage grains together as populations. The grains are grown specifically for the distillery, for flavour and perform better than modern varieties when grown without fertiliser or agrichemicals.
The grain is grown using an approach known as Restorative Continuous Cropping (RCC), which involves growing grain in the same field year after year without fallow years, tillage, crop rotation or chemical inputs, supporting greater biodiversity in the field. This system produces three times as much grain as a standard rotational organic grain production system.
We’re never just going through the motions at our distillery. Industrial farming is designed to create the same product with the same flavours on repeat. Our heritage grains are a diverse mix of rye, wheat and barley, grown by our farmers with each possessing their own character and flavours. So a standard distillery and a one-size-fits-all mashbill doesn’t work for us. We’re now working with eight different mashbills (and counting).
We also use a wide variety of casks to enhance the flavour of our heritage grains. We use new
American Oak, refilled rye casks, and repurposed casks that once held wines such as
Sauternes and Moscatel. We move the whisky between casks if it helps to bring out even more
of the grain’s flavours.
Chico our Master Distiller was born into a Portuguese winemaking family and raised amongst
the casks. He loves working with our heritage grains and experimenting with cask selection to
produce Fielden whiskies. These days, he’s also keeping busy getting our new distillery ready
for spirit to flow from the stills in September 2024.
We’re building a fully automated distillery in Yorkshire and scaling our warehousing to house
12,000 maturing casks of whisky by March 2030. In our new distillery, we’re changing the
distilling process to get the very best flavours from our heritage grains – we’ll continue to use a
combination of pot and column stills – while minimising inputs such as energy, water and time.
At Fielden, it always comes back to the grains. This is revolutionary whisky, from revolutionary
farming.
Like it? Buy it at www.fielden.com
