The Next Great Whisky May Hail from These Tiny Islands

Close to Scotland, the Faroe Islands offer unique advantages for distilling spirits

Faer Isles Distillery
The Faer Isles Distillery is currently being crowdfunded
Faer Isles Distillery

“The Faroe Islands, they’re the next Iceland,” as one of our travel-centric editors mentioned recently.

For tourism? Great. For spirits? Ehhhh … let’s hope the territory’s more inspired by its proximity to Scotland.

Good news on that end: Faer is a new whisky hailing from the North Atlantic island nation (which is technically a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark). The effort is being crowdfunded through a Founders’ Club, where members pay for a lifetime membership of 200 euros and receive three bottles from the distillery.

Those spirits include a gin infused with Faroese seaweed, a single malt new make spirit with a cube of carefully selected oak for home maturation and a 3-year-old whisky that’ll be ready in, well, three years. Members will also receive future discounts, event invites and the pre-emptive right to buy shares in Faer Isles Distillery Ltd.

Will the spirits be good? It sounds promising. As the distillery notes, “The salty, windy nature on the island provide the optimal atmosphere for whisky maturation, and the surrounding nature provide the juniper, angelica, nettles, and seaweed used for the gin.”

Faer Isles Distillery
The Founders’ Club members receive these three bottles
Faer Isles Distillery

The company also claims the “Faroese climate is like the climate in Scotland, only more humid, more salty, and more stable in temperature.” However, the malt and peat are being imported from their Scotch neighbors.

“We plan to use local, traditional methods for maturation that have been used for centuries to create the distinct culinary elements of the islands,” as Dánial Hoydal, founding partner of Faer Isles Distillery, tells Whisky Advocate.

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