Ad Gefrin Distillery: A masterclass in managing variability

In the foyer at Ad Gefrin Distillery in Northumberland, England, the walls are wood panelled. The project was undertaken by a joiner local to the distillery, in the market town of Wooler.

The distillery is not unique in this design choice; wood panelling is warm, classy, and carries obvious links to whisky production. What is unique is how this panelling was composed: it’s an intricate geometric jigsaw of 9,380 wooden tiles, each hand-cut onsite and placed individually, a job which took 12 months to complete.

It’s a decision driven by internal pride in the distillery, not a gimmick for external effect. The more you learn about Ad Gefrin, the more you see this attitude in action, a thread woven into the fabric that glints when you catch it in the right light.

Effect without affection

Unexpectedly, fabric is a good place to start.

On a press trip to Ad Gefrin and its environs, me and a couple of fellow journos visited the site of Gefrin palace — a 7th-century seat of Anglo Saxon royalty, and the distillery’s namesake. Our guide was Dr Chris Ferguson, an Anglo Saxon scholar and son of the distillery’s founders Alan and Eileen Ferguson. 

There was an Anglo Saxon reenactment at the site that weekend, about a dozen people in historical dress clustered under awnings to cook, sew and smith. One of our party asked a question about the vibrantly coloured garments the reenactors wore — pop-culture portrayals and textbook sketches had led us to expect something more drab. Dr Ferguson’s reply was matter-of-fact: the residents of the Anglo Saxon realm would have used whatever materials were at their disposal to dye their clothes, any brilliance a by-product.

The previous day, we had toured Ad Gefrin with head distiller Ben Murphy. His descriptions of the distillery’s design and processes revealed a similar pragmatism, one without affection that has proved strikingly effective.

Heriot-Watt graduate Ben describes himself as a “green” master distiller, but it was a shade that complemented Ad Gefrin, a new-build distillery founded by a family with no drinks industry experience. “There were no preconceived ideas of what we were going to achieve or how we were going to go about it, and that was kind of freeing,” he muses.

Designing for difference

The Fergusons enlisted Forsyths of Rothes to provide a turnkey set-up for Ad Gefrin. There’s nothing unusual about it (one-tonne mash tun, four washbacks, twin pot stills), but that’s what Ben wanted: ordinary equipment he could do extraordinary things with.

The Douglas fir washbacks aren’t the originals; Forsyths planned for stainless steel, but Ben replaced them with wood. The sterility of metal didn’t fit with his vision. He wanted wooden vessels that could cultivate their own ‘biomes’ of microorganisms, with noticeable distinctions already cropping up between the washes produced in each.

The washbacks are not temperature controlled, so to avoid heat-stressing the yeast during summer fermentations, the distilling team use two seasonal varieties sourced from WHC Lab in Ireland. Through the warmer months they ferment with Aries, a more heat-tolerant strain, while for the rest of the year they use Hercules (Ben calls this “a demolish-anything yeast”). They also run two different lengths of fermentation, at 72 and 96 hours, to suit their five-day production schedule.

This means Ad Gefrin has four new-make spirit recipes from yeast strains and fermentation times alone. Add in the idiosyncratic washbacks, and you have 16 possible combinations. That’s before you consider that every time those washbacks are used, they’re fermenting slightly differently — they’re only cleaned with steam to help microorganisms propagate.

The irregularity continues in the warehouse. It’s racked storage, six rows high, so once casks are filled and laid they aren’t moved. This exposes them to inconsistent levels of heat and humidity, affecting extraction and evaporation.

Most distillers would baulk at all these variables, but not Ben. “I’m a bit more free-wheeling: let the environment guide us, to make something that can only be made here by these people,” he says. “The batch element is really important… I don’t want it to be the same every single time.”

Showing, not telling

Ad Gefrin unveiled its inaugural single malt whiskies in late July 2026, the first three of a planned 12 releases in its Cræft series. A distillery’s first homegrown release is a make-or-break moment. You want to make a splash — not the cannonball kind, a showy vertical display followed by a crash, but one that ripples.

The plain white cartons that housed the Cræft releases were striking, but not showy. They gave the name of the distillery and nothing more, so purchasers had no way to know which expression they were getting.

From a stock management standpoint, it’s clever; eliminating cask information renders preferences void, ensuring more even sales. However, casting customers adrift from their regular buying cues forces them to gamble on an unknown. (And people really don’t like unknowns. A 2016 study from University College London found that, when faced with the chance of receiving a mild electric shock while playing a computer game, participants were more stressed by scenarios in which there was a possibility of a shock than a certainty of one.)

The tactic paid off. On the day of the Cræft series’ release, Ad Gefrin sold out its entire stock of bottles at the distillery in about four hours. The rest went in a matter of days. The second instalment is due before the end of the year and I can see that being equally coveted.

At a time when many are chasing the safety of conformity, Ad Gefrin wasn’t afraid to stand apart. They haven’t chosen this position, as others may, to be intentionally provocative. It’s not in service to their reputation but the liquid (and that definitely stands up to scrutiny).