COTSWOLDS DISTILLERY
English destination set to become the first whisky producer in its ‘very green, happy’ area,
COTSWOLDS, ENGLAND— There are definite advantages to doing overtime at the Cotswolds Distillery, whose award-winning single malt spirits and gins are taking the drinks world by storm.
“I discovered my favourite drink after working late one night,” admits Lizzie Pinder, head of research and development, during a guided tour. “I’d been doing tasting sessions and was too drunk to drive, so I had to stay over. The head distiller gave me the keys to the bar and told me to help myself.”
Not that it’s a bad place to spend the night. The distillery is tucked away in a particularly beautiful corner of the Cotswolds. The administrative offices are housed in what was once a derelict farm shed. Today the building, made from the region’s famous honey-hued stone, also contains an armchair-filled tasting room and a larder-like shop, and feels more like a luxurious country cottage.
The entire place is surrounded by fields of barley, and it’s these golden fields that prompted New Yorker Daniel Szor to ditch banking for brewing.
Szor discovered this part of the world after moving to London for work. He bought a holiday home a few kilometres from where the distillery now stands.
“One day, I was looking out the window at these fields of barley rippling in the wind and I wondered why nobody was doing anything with all that grain,” Szor recalls.
Despite being, in his own words, “the son of a Polish guy who drank nothing but vodka,” Szor always had a soft spot for whisky — a passion he’d fuel on holidays to Scotland. The distillery, which he founded in 2014, was his first foray into production. At the time, he was looking for a way out of banking, and dreamed of starting a business that provided an emotional connection.
“And there’s only so much emotional connection you can have with a hedge fund!” Szor adds. “But the Cotswolds has the whole package. I call it the Vermont of the U.K. — it’s a very green, happy place.”
If you’re wondering why I’m avoiding the word whisky, it’s because whisky must be matured for three years and one day. Szor founded the distillery in 2014, and in 2017, when that first barrel of single malt spirit comes of age, his business will officially become the Cotswolds’ first whisky producer. Even today it’s whisky in all but name; in the prestigious Jim Murray’s 2016 Whisky Bible, Szor’s single malt spirit was awarded 94 out of 100.
Our first stop on the tour is the gabled production room. The walls are lined with numbered oak casks. People can buy barrels as well as bottles, and not surprisingly, many employees have their own stash.
Pinder points to a barrel numbered 666. “The person who purchased that one waited a long time for that number to come up!”
We’re shown the enormous copper stills, one of which is used to separate out what’s known as the liquid’s “heart.” This will eventually become single malt spirit.
“We named it Janis, after Janis Joplin,” Pinder says of the still. “She sang the lyrics: ‘take another little piece of my heart,’ so we thought it was appropriate.”
It’s a reminder that the focus is very much on quality over quantity. The distillery is also a truly local affair: The lavender in the gin comes from the nearby village of Broadway, and local farmers collect the spent barley to use as animal feed.
In the tasting room, Pinder invites us to try the distillery’s products and offers “driver’s drams” for others to take away. She demonstrates how flavours in gin spring to life when ice is added, explaining it causes the oils to emulsify.
“I always loved gin, but fell in love with whisky when I came here,” says Pinder, who studied chemistry at college. “My favourite drink is the Cotswolds Cream Liquor. It’s like al- coholic hot chocolate!”
It will be autumn 2017 when the Cotswolds Distillery officially becomes the region’s first whisky producer, and excitement is building. The maturing of that first barrel will be celebrated with a huge party, and the guest list has already topped 1,000.
Good things really do come to those who wait. U.K. writer Tamara Hinson was a guest of the Cotswolds Distillery, which didn’t review or approve this story.