- Play Hard
- 24th Jun 2026
- 0
- 0 minute
If you love whisky, you’ll enjoy this new Illicit Stills Experience at Ad Gefrin
- Advertisement Feature
There’s a temptation, when imagining illicit whisky making in the Northumberland hills, to picture something solitary: a lone figure bent over a hidden still, smoke dissolving into the heather.
The reality, as the team at Ad Gefrin discovered while researching their Illicit Stills Experience, was far more remarkable – and more human.
This summer, visitors to Ad Gefrin will have the chance to take part in a fully guided, immersive evening that brings Northumberland’s forgotten whisky history to life.
Through storytelling, sound, and three carefully chosen whisky tastings, guests are taken on a journey from the hidden stills of the Cheviot Hills to the warmth of Ad Gefrin’s own restaurant, Bēodern.
If you love whisky, history, or both – this one is for you…
The Illicit Stills Experience
The experience moves through Ad Gefrin in stages, with each moment connecting past and present. Guests taste three whiskies that trace the full arc of the story:
New make spirit straight from the still – raw, clear, and unaged. This is the first time Ad Gefrin has ever offered guests a taste of their own spirit in this form.
Tácnbora – Ad Gefrin’s beloved and carefully crafted blended whisky whose name means “standard bearer,” representing the first chapter in Northumberland’s modern whisky journey.
A final celebratory dram – drawn from special editions and selected whiskies from Ad Gefrin’s range, served in a ram’s horn as a nod to the way whisky was once shared along the road.
The evening concludes in the bistro, Bēodern, with the Drovers Dish – a modern onion tarte tatin inspired by the simple, sustaining food that travelling drovers carried across the hills.
Image credit: Sally Ann Norman
The story behind it
Long before Ad Gefrin opened its doors, whisky was being made quietly in the Northumberland hills.
Whole communities across The Cheviots were involved, not just in distilling, but in moving and trading spirit along the ancient drovers’ roads that ran through the landscape.
These weren’t lone outlaws. They were farmers, labourers, and drovers, people for whom illicit distilling was a practical response to harsh agricultural cycles and scarce cash, carried out under cover of ordinary movement across the hills.
That history had been almost entirely forgotten. The Illicit Stills Experience exists to recover it – not as a piece of theatre, but as a genuine reckoning with what happened here and why it matters that whisky distilling has returned to Northumberland today. It brings to life the stories of the still sites that have been found in the Coquetdale Valley.
Image credit: Sally Ann Norman
Book now
The Illicit Stills Experience is running throughout summer 2026 on the following dates:
Friday 26th June
Friday 28th August
Friday 25th September
Tickets are £40 per person.
Subscribe
Subscribe now to receive our twice-weekly emails and exclusive offers for High Life North readers.