Whisky has been made in England for longer than you may suppose. Distilleries in London, Bristol and Liverpool had been operational as way back because the Nineteenth century – even when the spirits they created failed ever to achieve the renown loved by their rivals in Scotland and Eire. However, when London’s Lea Valley Distillery fell silent in 1905, England vanished from the worldwide whisky map for practically a century.
The total-on renaissance we see now – there are presently roughly 40 distilleries making whisky the size and breadth of the nation – took time to construct momentum. Hicks & Healey ran spirit in Cornwall in 2003, however the first English whisky operation of any measurement was established by the Nelstrop farming household in Norfolk in 2006.
The English Whisky Firm’s St George’s Distillery has a set-up that might be acquainted to anybody who’s visited a malt distillery north of the border: copper pot stills constructed by Forsyths of Rothes and a course of that, basically, follows the template of Scotch.
Generally. St George’s produces loads of conventional, double-distilled whisky from malted barley, however there’s an experimental edge that has since been emulated by many different English whisky-makers: triple-distilled malt, peated spirit runs and the exploration of other uncooked supplies akin to rye, wheat and oats, in addition to chocolate and crystal malt.
East Anglia’s rolling arable fields provide a pure backdrop for making whisky. Throw in brewing experience and it’s simple to know why Adnams, situated within the well-heeled Suffolk resort city of Southwold, ought to flip its hand to the craft.
Copper Home Distillery. Credit score: Anthony Cullen
Go to Adnams’ glass-fronted Copper Home Distillery and also you’re positively not in Speyside any extra… gleaming stills made by Christian Carl in Germany, and a dizzyingly tall beer stripping column. Since 2011, Adnams has been making whisky right here, together with a core vary of Single Malt, Rye Malt (75/25 rye/barley) and Triple Malt (wheat, barley and oats).
St George’s and Adnams are roughly an hour’s drive aside when the visitors’s variety, however the contrasts between their kinds of spirit are palpable. What unites them is their willingness to riff on conventional distillation methods to probe new frontiers of flavour.
Discover English whisky past East Anglia and this sense of curiosity and variety takes maintain much more strongly. It’s greatest not to consider ‘English whisky’ in any generic sense – in any case, would you do the identical with Scotch? – and as an alternative, reasonably as in Burgundy and different wine areas, give attention to the qualities of the person producer.
When Dan Szor established Cotswolds Distillery in Stourton in 2014, the whisky-loving ex-financier was impressed partly by Islay distillery Bruichladdich, with its give attention to grain provenance and handbook operation, however primarily by the countryside he noticed round him. That quintessentially English pastoral panorama finds a sensory echo in Cotswolds’ calmly fruity, honeyed distillate.
Cotswolds Distillery
Greater than 200 miles north, Cumbria’s panoramas are, by comparability, wealthy and dramatic, with hovering summits and steeply plunging mountain dales. Right here, in a transformed Victorian dairy farm on the shores of Bassenthwaite Lake, The Lakes Distillery produces a hedonistically fruity, velvety spirit that finds its most interesting expression in a collection of ex-Sherry casks. At The Lakes, the selection of wooden is each bit as important because the character of the distillate.
Kent’s River Medway is about as far – geographically and visually – as you may get from the Lake District with out leaving England altogether. And the identical contrasts apply to the Copper Rivet Distillery arrange by the Russell household in Chatham’s Royal Dockyard.
Experimentation and provenance stroll hand-in-hand right here, with quite a lot of cereal grains grown by native farmers and a Heath Robinson array of malts, stills and abv ranges. It isn’t full anarchy although: the distillery abides by a strict algorithm – the Invicta Constitution – protecting the whole lot from age statements to permitted grains and provenance.
This raises an intriguing problem for the fast-developing English whisky trade: does it want a rulebook? Scotch is ruled by a famously strict set of rules enshrined in UK regulation, however whisky south of Hadrian’s Wall arguably owes a lot of its pleasure and variety to the liberty with which distilleries are permitted to function.
Nonetheless, as English whisky continues to thrive and increase, producers have banded collectively to create the English Whisky Guild, introduced in Could this 12 months. Its 15 founder members – together with Adnams, Copper Rivet, Cotswolds, The English Whisky Co and The Lakes – have a imaginative and prescient of ‘showcasing and defending the exceptional high quality and variety of the now quite a few, distinctive whiskies which might be crafted in England’.
Crucially, the EWG talks about variety in the identical breath as consistency of high quality, and that mixture goes to be important if the trade is to fulfil the bullish progress projections provided by the Guild: spirit quantity from English whisky distilleries is forecast to rise by 189% between 2019 and 2023, and the variety of bottles bought might soar by 418% over the identical timescale.
English whisky could also be Scotch’s youthful, smaller sibling, however it’s an more and more noisy one and – way more importantly – it’s already bottling some terrific liquid.
The Lakes Distillery
Cotswolds Founder’s Selection Whisky
The late whisky guru Dr Jim Swan found that combining comparatively youthful spirit with STR (shaved, toasted and recharred) ex-red wine barriques makes for an intensely juicy, luscious whisky. Bottled at cask energy, that is brimming with chocolate-coated plums, plus a cereal-accented, nutty notice from Cotswolds’ mild however characterful distillate.
Alc 59.1-60.5%.
The Lakes The Whiskymaker’s Reserve No 5 Single Malt
This significantly spectacular distillery on the shores of Bassenthwaite Lake in Cumbria continues to evolve and hone its Sherry wood-led model, this time combining ex-oloroso, PX and purple wine casks of Spanish and American oak. Explosively fragrant, the Sherried sweetness veers off into savoury – virtually meaty – territory. A wealthy, indulgent whisky.
Alc 52%.
Masthouse Single Malt
Made on the Copper Rivet distillery in Chatham’s Royal Dockyard, that is an expressive whisky that goals to seize the character of regionally grown Belgravia barley, matured in first-fill ex-Bourbon and virgin oak casks. Lengthy fermentation brings flavours of hedgerow flowers, hothouse fruits, and a cereal notice rounded out by oak-derived ginger and white chocolate.
Alc 45%.
The Norfolk Parched Single Grain
The ‘previous timer’ of the English whisky scene nonetheless leads the pack due to a various household of whiskies and a ceaseless experimental zeal. It is a fashionable traditional, providing a zesty lemon character, butterscotch and popcorn together with a contact of baking spices and protracted vanilla. Superbly poised between the candy and the dry.
Alc 45%.
The Oxford Artisan Distillery Rye Whisky Batch 4
Billed as ‘The Graduate’, this fourth TOAD rye launch makes use of a mixture of ‘maslin’ grains – heritage rye and wheat grown collectively regionally and harvested in 2017 – and a mixture of American oak casks of assorted sizes and toasts. That provides further complexity to the distillery’s punchy rye model, together with tangy forest fruits, a pinch of fiery chilli warmth and, beneath all of it, a drying cereal character.
Alc 51.3%.
Wire Works Single Malt First Launch
Derbyshire’s debut whisky, made on the White Peak Distillery, a Nineteenth-century former wire works on the banks of the River Derwent, is a massively promising, calmly peated spirit filled with orchard fruits, espresso cake and toffee from using ex-Bourbon and STR casks. The peat is comparatively mild, including seasoning to a characterful spirit created utilizing lengthy fermentations and a novel yeast with hyperlinks to the native brewing trade.
Alc 50.3%.
