Industry Distillery Founder Daniel Szor Area served World Wide | Founded 2014 Headquarters United Kingdom Products English whisky
Gin | |
The Cotswolds Distillery was established in 2014, and was the first full-scale distillery to be located in the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Situated in a 5-acre site in Stourton in the North Cotswolds, its focus is distilling single malt whisky. It is one of only six distilleries producing English whisky.
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The Cotswolds Distilling Company was founded by Daniel Szor, a former hedge fund manager born in New York, who left a 30-year career in finance to pursue whisky making. Initial development of the distillery was assisted by Harry Cockburn (a Master Distiller and former Production Director at Bowmore distillery) and Dr. Jim Swan (an expert in cask maturation whose previous projects include work with Penderyn in Wales and Kavalan in Taiwan). Production began on September 5, 2014, with the first cask of single malt whisky filled on September 22, 2014. The first release of whisky, when a selection of casks have reached the three-year minimum age, will take place in October 2017 and will consist of 5000 bottles.
In January 2016, the Distillery opened a crowd funding iniative on CrowdBnk with the aim of raising £500,500 for expansion of the business. The investment window closed with the iniative having raised £1,001,000 from 124 investors in seven weeks.
Technical Specifications
The distillery features a 0.5 tonne mash tun and eight 2,500 litre washbacks. The distillation takes place in two copper pot stills supplied by Forsyths of Rothes, Scotland. The wash still is a 2600-litre still, and the spirit still is a 1600-litre still. The main casks used for maturation of the core expressions are STR casks, (reconditioned ex-red wine casks) and American oak ex-bourbon casks. The distillery has also filled madeira, moscatel, rum, sherry and apple brandy casks. In April 2016, the distillery had so far filled 620 casks, with plans to produce around 300,000 bottles of single malt whisky per annum. Local water sources are used, and the distillery uses a carbon filter and deionisation process to filter the water before using it in the production and dilution processes. Unusually, the operation of the distillery is completely manual, with no automation. 123 valves are manipulated by hand to direct the movement of liquid around the distillery and to run the distillation processes. Several heat-exchange systems are used to recycle heat energy produced during distillation and the site also features 80 solar PV panels.
The gin is produced on a 500-litre hybrid pot and column still made by Arnold Holstein GmbH of Markdorf, Germany. Using just the pot still section of the still, the gin is rectified using the ‘steep and boil’ method, and the gin is collected in one shot, as opposed to the multi-shot method traditionally used by larger gin brands.
Single Malt Whisky
The Cotswolds Single Malt whisky will be available from October 2017 and the initial release will be limited to 5000 bottles. It will be an unpeated style, using organic local malt from the Bradwell Grove Estate (also home to the Cotswolds Wildlife Park) It will be bottled at 46% ABV and will be non-chill filtered.
Cotswolds Dry Gin
The Cotswolds Dry Gin contains nine botanicals. The central three botanicals of the London Dry style, juniper, coriander seed and angelica root are macerated for 18 hours in the neutral base spirit (a rectified spirit at 96% ABV, made from wheat) and some water. The remaining six botanicals are lavender (sourced from the Snowshill Lavender farm, local to the distillery), bay leaves, the fresh zest of pink grapefruits and limes, cardamom seeds and black pepper corns. The use of fresh citrus zest is fairly unusual in gin production, where the less time-consuming use of dried zest is far more common. The use of the fresh zest means that the louche effect occurs when the gin is diluted or chilled; as the oils from the botanicals emulsify they give the gin a cloudy, pearlescent appearance. The louche effect has been embraced by the distillery, who chose not to avoid it by employing chill-filtering, in order preserve the strong flavours and full-bodied texture delivered by the use of oily botanicals.
Reception and Awards
The Cotswolds Distillery receives 15,000 visitors per year and in 2016 won Best Distillery Tour in the Distillery Experience Awards run by Drinks International, and a Distillery Master award for Consumer Experience from the Spirits Business organisation. The Cotswolds Dry Gin has won a number of awards, including World’s Best London Dry Gin at the 2016 World Gin Awards, gold medals at the Berlin and San Francisco World Spirits Competitions, and a Platinum medal at the 2015 Spirits International Prestige Awards.
In the 2016 edition of his Whisky Bible, the whisky writer Jim Murray awarded the new-make spirit that will mature into the Cotswolds Single Malt Whisky 94/100, earning it a ‘Liquid Gold’ award.