It only takes a fast bus up out of Lille city centre to reach the quiet canalside town (now more a suburb) of Wambrechies. I took this trip on April Fools Day earlier this year, but the distillery I reached was no joke. I was shown around one of France’s oldest distilleries by Stéphane, a cheery distiller with a background in craft brewing. While working with his brother and a friend through the craft beer boom of the 2010s, Stéphane loved spirits, particularly bourbon. After scoring a visit to Kentucky with a US importer in 2017, he wanted to get into whisky more than ever…
Meanwhile, the distillery building here in Wambrechies was near collapse. When I said this was one of France’s oldest distilleries, I meant it! Founded by a Belgian family in 1817, it was dedicated solely to jenever production (more on the jenever later). Built on the site of an even older mill, the place was taken over by a Belgian consortium in 1990. They actually started working on whisky at that time, technically making Wambrechies one of the first five whisky makers in France. If you ever find older stuff branded Loos Whisky, that came out of here.
I say ‘technically’ because it was a long road from there to releasing a proper whisky range. By 2019, the distillery here at Wambrechies was collapsing. The Belgian management company hadn’t done much with the place, the owner was retiring: Nobody else wanted it. The building was old, and many experienced distillery staff had departed. However, the distillery was protected as a historic structure, and that has saved it for a new revival.
While Stéphane got on board, joining more experienced staff (Mathieu waves to me - he’s worked here for 28 years), whisky still took longer to revive here. Old stock existed from the post-1990 experiments, but not much. Thanks to COVID, the new pot still installed in 2019 here at Wambrechies only started operating in 2023. Even as I visit, the distillery is still being rebuilt - Stéphane points at one empty area which is due to become a restaurant and bar, facing out on to the canalside.
That’s a lot of history - now we can get on to what’s happening these days at Wambrechies!
THE DETAILS
- Production runs October to March
- Wort brewed for 60-75 minutes
- 7-8 day fermentation at 24-26°C
- Bakers’ yeast
- Grain-in distillation
- Moving to 1200L Holstein hybrid still (single distillation using column)
- Spirit casked at 63-64% ABV
In the past, rye and barley were milled and lifted up to the top floor. Dumped into wooden hoppers, the grist would fall into large copper vessels for mashing. As of 2017, this whole rubber belt setup was still operational! They’ve long fallen silent by the time of my visit, and this space will become an events area soon. The former maltings for Wambrechies (just over the road) are now a restaurant.
Downstairs are thirty open 5000L tanks for wort. That should give you an idea of the scale this place once operated at - Wambrechies was once a record jenever producer! The ‘mont et baisse’ wort cooler is very old, and I can believe it - you don’t see anything like this in modern distilleries! The steam-powered belts from the top floor would feed power down to move and agitate the wort, accelerating temperature change.
Batches were then inoculated with baking yeast and mixed by hand in enormous floor tanks. Even today, an enormous producer of baking yeast, Lesaffre, is headquartered nearby. Stephane ported a lot of his yeast knowledge from craft brewing over to Wambrechies. Employing special yeasts and temperature controls today, there’s no plan to go for the maxed-out, high-speed, maximum alcohol fermentation of many Scottish distilleries here. It’s also a far cry from the old open-air, lambic-esque fermentation used here in the past, but Stephane says he’s open to doing that again in future!
Under the floorboards lie other large tanks, once used to store the finished jenever. Stéphane opens the door, showing that you can still smell that product today!
I loved walking into the heart of the old distillery and seeing these old columns towering above me! Now silent, these stills once produced the jenever here. The hot vapours from the wash would pass through these three columns to refine the low wines. After that, a second distillation in two 6300L pots took place (with juniper added). I wish these were used for whisky making, but no, the distillery made the (very sensible) decision to get something new.
This new still is a Holstein unit, identical to that at TOS Distillerie. This is where I should say that Wambrechies is in fact partnered with this other whiskymaker in the Hauts de France. Between them, the two distilleries produce the ‘Wambrechies’ and ‘Artesia’ whisky brands. I’ll admit, I got confused at times about which whiskies come from where, but you’ll find Artesia bottles online at TOS, and Wambrechies at… well, Wambrechies. The plan is to have the two distilleries work in concert, producing distinct styles. Artesia will work in some peated production and use more special casks, while Stephane focuses on fermentation and the earlier side of production at Wambrechies.
This new pot still is used for jenever and whisky alike, but these days, the column is only used for whiskymaking. That’s because the local jenever style must be double distilled. This style of jenever - Flandres Artois - is unique to this northern corner of France, where one cultural foot remains planted across the Belgian border. It must be produced using grain - no porting in neutral alcohol for re-distillation like gin. Today, only two distilleries produce it, and the demand is in decline, so Stephane’s work includes bringing the product to new customers. Wambrechies uses unaged barley and rye, while Oul Persyn uses barley and wheat. Oul Persyn is also trying to produce some whisky, and funny enough, that distillery is one year older: 1816 instead of 1817.
AGING
When launching Artesia, Stephane bought in all new barrels. These are then reused for Wambrechies. I spy a big Amontillado in the corner… made from walnut wood! Stephane draws me a sample. It’s nutty and floral all at once on the nose. Sweet on the tongue, but then a steady steamroller of heavy sherry starts pouring out of it, and it just keeps going! This feels like an oloroso in many ways, but substituting much of the sweetness for nuttiness. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising for amontillado, but the overall effect is to transform this two year aged sample into something that tastes like a *much* older Scotch.
The old owner had bought a bunch of old bourbon casks and re-used them to death, bleeding them dry of any remaining flavour. If Stephane needed more evidence that little thought had been put into the wood selection, he found a 1990 ex-Scotch whisky barrel hidden in that mix without any notes! Some smaller Palo Cortado and Palo Fino casks dot the warehouse. A few new casks of Adour oak, sourced from a cooperage in Armagnac… also, it's not used any more, but this ancient 5100L megacask once held jenever.
“We’re not going to talk about age with these whiskies”, Stephane explains. He is keen to avoid over-wooding his whiskies. The approach here is not the classic Scottish ‘one style with age gradations’. He wants feedback from these first NAS expressions to inform future development of the style here at Wambrechies. Stephane’s love for bourbon means that he wants a consistent supply, not just any old mix of bourbon distilleries thrown into a batch of staves. This is more difficult to set up than you might think. He would love to exclusively source from Willett, for example, but most cask brokers apparently don’t have a way of making this happen right now.
All the old Wambrechies whisky stock has now been bottled - given its quality, that’s a mercy. Make space for the new stuff! Stephane has been careful to improve the old stock over time by gradually blending in more new stock, improving quality while avoiding a sudden 100% shift to much younger new stock.
‘Classic’ Artesia was launched in 2020 as a pretty young but smooth malt, but Stephane wanted something stronger. He discussed STR cask options with Maison du Whisky, and eventually settled on old American oak casks used by Spanish wineries. Reworked as STRs with a no. 3 char, these casks became the key to Artesia. Adding more caramel and warm vanilla tones over a 6-8 month finish (after the initial ex-bourbon aging), these have made Artesia the clear no. 1 product from Wambrechies. Crucially, locals have really bought into the new style, being consistently surprised that it's less than four years old.
TASTING
The 40% ABV three year old bottle has only a few % of new spirit in it, but this does at least let them sell it for a record low price of €28. That said, Stephane tells me that French supermarkets were initially so sceptical that anyone would buy a French whisky, they pushed the price down as low as €20! The old packaging was made super simple/cheap for this reason. And you know what? The taste is… very simple. There’s really not much to say. Thank goodness this is being left in the past!
The oldest Wambrechies whisky is an eight year old aged in ex-Madeira cask (44.5% ABV). Even that is priced at a very attractive €55. It's an unfiltered malt with dark tannins and some fruit to follow it up. No barnstormer, but adding welcome depth and complexity, especially for the price point.
The cask strength (54.5% ABV) is very light in colour, and I’m not sure what cask(s) it actually aged in. There’s a welcome thickness to the feel, but it carries some of the same heavy, musty flavours as the lighter stuff. The fact I can’t clearly tell which cask it aged in is not encouraging.
Side by side on the shelf, the colour difference between regular and Char 3 Artesia is incredibly evident. While I didn’t get a photo of it, there’s also the peated Artesia, produced using 100% Scottish barley peated to 50ppm - but apparently it's a ‘starter’s peat’ in style? This is one slightly disappointing note from Wambrechies - something which is not really local in any way. They’ve been producing one batch a year to start with, and have dialled in the process more each time. I have to say - tasting it for myself, it has a good aroma with a slightly sweet edge!
The flagship jenever here is Wambrechies 49, bottled at a logical 49% ABV and produced using a mashbill of 74/26 barley and rye. It is to be served chilled, in case you get your hands on some. Worth noting that Wambrechies’ whisky sales already account for more income than jenever, at about a 3:2 ratio.
The 43% Char no. 3 single malt combines three and five year old spirit. This has the best mouthfeel by far, and is very balanced. I can see why locals love this! It could compete well with a young but smartly aged Scotch single malt. It's easy to like, fruity - that longer ferment is definitely paying off. Could do with a touch more age, but still a very solid start. Those extra sweet, dark notes from the STR are very welcome, especially as I find many STR-aged malts fail to really deliver that (looking at you, Filey Bay).
There are some single cask Artesia bottlings, using one-offs like moscatel and white port, and we rounded off the tasting with one of the Moscatel special editions. After three years in bourbon and two more in moscatel, this malt ends up with a beautiful floral note and some pear drop. That moscatel cask adds a lot!
Look to the Future
At the time of my visit, construction outside had stopped production, but tours should certainly be running again by now! The whiskies available in the distillery shop during my visit were also entirely old stock, save one newer, taller bottle: I suspect this won;t be the case if you visit after reading this.
Stéphane is very happy that the newer whiskies have already picked up some awards, including all the Artesias. The latter range (and TOS Distillerie) can continue to focus more heavily on whisky, while Wambrechies has to balance that with jenevermaking.
I’m very glad I took the time to check out this distillery - like many in France, it’s still developing and working its way towards a final form. But that doesn’t mean you need to wait before taking a look, especially when it's easy to reach by public transport and located in a town that’s nice to visit for its own sake.
The only thing left is to add TOS to a future EuroWhisky trip…
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