Harvest & fermentation
Cane juice, cereal mash, cider apples or grape wine — fermented slowly by the distiller's chosen yeast, the longer the better.
Single-distillery · cellar-aged
Spirits aged with patience, poured with intention.
Single-distillery whiskies, rhums, cognacs and gins from small French and European houses we visit once a year. Aged in our Burgundy cellar, shipped with a tasting card and the glassware they ask for.
43
Bottles in catalogue
53
Years of practice
14
Partner distilleries
From the Beaune cellar
From still to glass
Five steps from harvest to your glass
Each bottle in the cellar travelled the same five steps before it earned its label — no shortcuts, no industrial dilution.
Pot still distillation
Copper pot or column still, every cut made by hand — heads and tails set aside for the next run, only the heart goes to the cask.
Cask ageing
Ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, Limousin oak or French chestnut — chosen for what the wood will give the spirit over the slow years.
Selection & blending
The cellar master tastes every cask before bottling, blends as little as possible — most of our bottles are single-cask or near-single.
Bottled & sent off
Non chill-filtered, no caramel colouring, labelled by hand. A tasting card slips into every box before it leaves the cellar.
Six families · forty-three bottles
The cellar
Begin with the bar tools, end with the flagship XO. Each bottle has been tasted, scored and chosen by the cellar master.
i.
Whiskies
Speyside, Highland and Islay single malts at five, eight, ten, twelve and fifteen years — the small library of single malts to read in slow evenings.
Discover
ii.
Rhums
A Martinique agricole blanc, an eight-year Guadeloupe vieux and a fourteen-year single-vintage agricole — the rhum continent in three bottles.
Discover
iii.
Cognacs & Armagnacs
Petite Champagne VSOP, Bas-Armagnac ten years, Grande Champagne Napoleon and the flagship XO. The slow brown spirits of south-western France.
Discover
iv.
Gins & Vodkas
A pot-still potato vodka, a classic juniper-led London Dry and a contemporary citrus gin. The white spirits, properly chosen.
Discover
v.
Eaux-de-vie
A young Pays d'Auge Calvados, an Oaxacan mezcal espadín and a Calvados aged twenty years — the fruit and agave eaux-de-vie that close a meal.
Discover
vi.
Accessories & tasting
The glasses, the bar tools, the tasting trios and the ice moulds. The objects that turn a bottle into a proper pour.
Discover« A good bottle is the product of fifteen patient years and ten minutes of decision. We aim to honour both. »
— the Distelane cellar · Beaune
The cellar master's picks
Eight bottles to begin with
Where the spirits come from
Four regions, four characters
We work with fourteen partner distilleries across four regions, each chosen for what the place gives the spirit — the water, the soil, the wood, the patience.
Speyside & Highland · Scotland
Single malt whisky
Soft water from granite hills, copper pot stills, ex-bourbon and sherry casks. Three small distilleries in Aberlour, Carron and the eastern Highlands.
Martinique & Guadeloupe · Caribbean
Rhum agricole and vieux
AOC Martinique cane pressed within six hours; tropical ageing in ex-bourbon casks under a generous angel's share. Two family distilleries we visit each January.
Cognac & Pays d'Auge · France
Brandy and Calvados
Ugni Blanc grapes from the Petite and Grande Champagne crus; cider apples from a single Norman farm. Slow distillation in copper, slow ageing in French oak.
Oaxaca · Mexico
Mezcal espadín
A fifth-generation maestro mezcalero stone-roasts agave hearts in a conical earth pit, ferments with wild yeasts and distils twice in a clay pot still.
From the cellar floor
From the journal
Short pieces on tasting technique, cask wood and the small obsessions of a working spirits cellar.
Technique
Why your whisky deserves a five-millilitre drop of water
A precise dash of water on a cask-strength malt opens the nose and rounds the burn. The chemistry, the right glassware and the small instrument that gets the dose right.
Read
Wood
Ex-bourbon, ex-sherry and the colour of the dram
Why a Speyside dressed in Oloroso reads of dried fig, and an Islay aged in ex-bourbon reads of vanilla. Cask chemistry and how to read the bottle.
Read
Tasting
How to run a blind tasting at the kitchen table
Three glasses, three numbered slates, a sheet of paper. The simplest format for taking the labels out of the conversation and putting the liquid first.
Read