The Black Grouse whisky

Male black grouse jousting on lek site

Have you tasted The Black Grouse yet?

No, not the bird, the whisky.

Developed by The Famous Grouse, The Black Grouse whisky is a premium blend that combines the popular Famous Grouse blend with peaty malt whiskies, to create a more smoky, peated flavour.

Our partnership with the Famous Grouse - which began in June 2008 - goes from strength to strength. A tremendous £30,000 has been raised to date and over the coming 12 months, we expect to receive a further £60,000 in donations to help save the black grouse from extinction.

Fifty pence per bottle of The Black Grouse whisky is donated to help save the black grouse from extinction.

Making a difference

The Black Grouse is one of the UK's most iconic species yet in 2005, there were fewer than 5,000 displaying (or lekking — meaning 'to dance') males — a fifth of the number in the 1970s. The aim of the donations is to fund conservation work across 85,000 acres of land at four UK nature reserves:

Corrimony in Scotland: £12,000 has funded the planting of 11 hectares of native Caledonian forest.
Geltsdale in England: £5,000 has been used to erect over 760 metres of new fencing to protect seven hectares of scattered hawthorn scrub.
Inversnaid in Scotland: £8,000 allowed us to undertake tree planting and erect new stock fences, enabling better grazing control and improving vegetation. It was therefore satisfying to see that Inversnaid bucked the national trend and reported an increase in black grouse numbers this year.
Lake Vrynwy in Wales: £5,000 paid for land management to produce the ideal habitat for brood rearing, involving tractors mowing strips in the heather to enable young chicks to reach important food sources.

Stuart Housden, Director of RSPB Scotland, said: 'It is a real pleasure working with The Famous Grouse promoting their excellent new whisky and our important black grouse conservation work. Together we are certainly raising the profile of this amazing bird to new audiences, whilst also enjoying one of Scotland's finest products, from a company that shares our values.

'I hope Christmas sales of the whisky beat all expectations, so that we can really begin to deliver extensive new habitat work across many of our black grouse reserves in the New Year.'

Get your hands on a bottle

We've been working hard to get The Famous Black Grouse into the UK's top four supermarkets so a wee dram is never too far away. In addition to Sainsbury's, you can now find the whisky in Asda, Morrisons and Tesco - download the document on the right of this page to find your nearest stockists. Enjoy!

Want to find out more about the beautiful black grouse and what we're doing to help them, check out our Black Grouse blog.

What can I do?

Enjoy Black Grouse whisky and help to save the black grouse.

Buy 'The Black Grouse' today

Last modified: 11 November 2009

In more depth

Conserving black grouse

Bird guide

Black grouse

Nature reserves

Downloads

The Black Grouse stockists (128Kb): List of Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Tesco stores where you can buy The Black Grouse.

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