The team at a Yorkshire coast brewery and Yorkshire’s first whisky distillery are celebrating after being announced as finalists in the 20th annual Farmers Weekly awards.

Wold Top Brewery and its sister company, Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery, have reached the final of the Diversification of the Year award alongside two other Yorkshire businesses. Both businesses source their barley from the original family farm, Hunmanby Grange, which is also home to the brewery.

Co-founder of both Wold Top and Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery, Tom Mellor, said: “The Farmers Weekly awards is a prestigious awards programme in the agriculture industry, and we’re proud to have been judged finalists in the competitive Diversification sector on account of the partnership between the farm, the brewery and the distillery.

“It’s good to know that, irrespective of who wins, the trophy will be coming back to Yorkshire.”

Wold Top is run by Mellor’s daughter, Kate and husband Alex Balchin, and his other daughter, Jenni Ashwood, is the marketing director at Spirit of Yorkshire Distillery.

The awards winners will be announced at a gala dinner on 3rd October at The Grosvenor House Hotel in London. The Mellor family faces competition from Richard Nicholson, Cannon Hall Farm, South Yorkshire and Annabel Makin-Jones, Sturton Grange, West Yorkshire.

The Farmers Weekly awards are organised by the eponymous publication, which is celebrating the 90th anniversary of its first issue.

Established in 2003, Wold Top brews cask, keg and bottled ales from home and Wolds grown malting barley, hops and pure, chalk-filtered Yorkshire Wolds water.

Home to Filey Bay single malt whisky, Spirit of Yorkshire is a field-to-bottle distillery that was launched in 2016. Its first single malt whisky was bottled in 2019. It is a collaboration between Tom Mellor and business partner David Thompson. It is one of only a handful of distilleries worldwide that uses 100% home-grown barley to produce its whisky.