Summerton Whisky Club’s August 2025 Club Bottle – Fielden Hazybower Rye Whisky
A lot has changed in the last three years since we shared The Oxford Artisan Distillery’s rye whisky, including their expansion and a rebrand to ‘Fielden’. It’s a great pleasure to introduce your August Club Bottle – the second annual release in the Fielden Field Notes Collection. Fielden’s ‘focus on the field’ brings with it a level of information that is very rarely seen with whisky releases.
Grown on farms in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire and Norfolk, the mashbill (make-up of grains fermented) is 70% rye, 20% wheat and 10% malted barley, which was grown as 38.5% maslin (rye and wheat), 40% rye, 11.5% wheat and 10% barley.
Fermentation took place at their Oxford distillery for five days in both wooden and stainless steel washbacks, with commercial yeast added 24 hours after mashing.
Distilled in a pot still first, and secondly in a column still, it has then been aged in second fill American Oak barrels and one old Hungarian Oak Tokaji sweet wine cask. We even know that there was a 62 day vatting period (time given to marry the liquid from the casks together) during which the whisky was slowly diluted.
Whilst I am already a fan of Fielden’s style, something Chico (Fielden Master Blender) has been perfecting over the years, the Tokaji cask adds something I’ve not experienced from them before, and introduces something worth sharing with all. For those that like their whisky cocktails in the Summer I think this would make a great Rye Old Fashioned.
As well as sharing a fantastic rye, I wanted to give their team a chance to share who they have become –
Fielden launched in May 2024 with a clear mission: to put better grain farming at the heart of whisky. But our journey started well before that – with a distillery tucked inside a Victorian building in the centre of Oxford. We began life as The Oxford Artisan Distillery, based at the Old Depot in Oxford.
We fired up our stills in 2017 – making gin and vodka while quietly laying down the casks that would become our first whiskies. From day one we focused on growing heritage grains regeneratively without agrichemicals and as locally as possible – within 50 miles of the distillery. As demand grew so did our farming.
We expanded beyond Oxfordshire and began working with a wider network of brilliant farmers who shared our belief in farming that restores the land. It meant more grains more growers and more momentum in regenerative agriculture. In 2021 we released our first whisky – Oxford Rye Whisky.
Back then every drop we made ran through our original stills: Nautilus and Nemo. They were beautiful and entirely unique – but far from efficient broke often and were awful when it came to water and energy usage.
We’d also outgrown our space. The Old Depot was full of charm and history but, as a Grade II-listed building dating back to the 1800s, it offered little room to grow not to mention some questionable pipework.
So we adapted. We began working with distilling partners who could handle the complexity of our diverse grain recipes and who had the tools to scale with us. With this new approach we increased production, planted more grain, partnered with more farmers and brought even more life to the fields.
Throughout our growth we stayed true to our focus on heritage grains. We kept growing the original heritage grains – maslin dredge populations of rye, wheat and barley – and also introduced some new ones like einkorn, emmer and spelt. We diversified our grain too mixing heritage varieties with organic grains and resilient modern varieties naturally adapted for no- and low-input farming. With every addition we aimed to increase the diversity, resilience and yield of our grain populations to reach a sustainable and viable regenerative approach.
As our farming and production moved beyond Oxford, we realised the story we were telling at The Oxford Artisan Distillery no longer matched what we were doing. We weren’t just a local distillery anymore – we were a growing community of growers and makers working across the country to change grain farming and whisky for the better. Our roots started in a place, but our purpose was in the fields.
We wanted the farming to be front and centre. We wanted to invite people into the whole journey: seed to soil, field to bottle. So we made a choice: to focus on whisky and to rebrand in a way that reflected the work we were doing in the fields.
The name Fielden comes from Old English meaning “of the field”. It felt right – because that’s where everything starts.
At Fielden we’re bringing our fields back to life with diverse grains that thrive without chemicals – letting nature take the lead. We call this “no chem regen” farming. With healthy soil, clear waters and flourishing biodiversity in our fields, we’re nurturing wonderful and wild ecosystems above and below ground. We partner with farmers who want to join us in this approach. It’s experimental so we pay by acre planted and not yield, shielding our farmers from the commercial risk of a “poor harvest”.
When it’s time to distil, working with multiple distilling partners gives us room to experiment: different still shapes, different mash bills, different approaches tailored to what’s been harvested. We’re not just making whisky from grain, we’re making whisky OF the grain – of the soil it came from, the farmers who grew it, the growing season that shaped it. Our aim is simple: bring the field to your glass. And hopefully in the process help shape a future where delicious things can also be good for the land.
Thanks for being part of the journey so far.
The Fielden Team