Cask and thou shall receive...
It has been a decade in the making but a Yorkshire couple have fulfilled their dream and produced the county’s first carbon zero malt whisky. Catherine Scott spoke to them about their mission.
BEST known for its gin and collaborations with restaurants such as the Black Swan at Oldstead, Roots and Skosh in York, owners of Cooper King Distillery, Abbie and Chris Jaume, have done what they originally set out to do ten years ago – make whisky. It was October 2013 when the couple handed in their notice and went backpacking to Australia – a trip that would change the course of their lives.
Abbie, a scientist, and Chris an architect, met at Newcastle University and decided to quit their jobs to travel in a bid to get inspiration for a business they could run together. Whisky drinkers themselves, it was while travelling in Tasmania that the young couple became fascinated by the country’s eight operational whisky distilleries.
“We thought if they can create something so amazing in Tasmania why can’t we do it in England?” explains Abbie. They spent time learning from the Tasmanian distillers before heading back to England and spending two years researching and creating a business plan. Abbie also embarked on a distilling course.
They eventually took up Abbie’s father’s offer of converting a former stables on land owned by her grandmother, in Sutton-on-the-Forest, near York, where she grew up.
“We spent the deposit we’d saved to buy our first home together, but that only covered the driveway,” says Chris, whose great-great grandfather, Charles Cooper King, inspired the name for the distillery and even the coat of arms on its label. So they reached out to potential investors to enable them to build the distillery with the green credentials they were passionate about. It enabled them to finish their distillery, order their specially-shaped still from Tasmania and other equipment they needed.
By that time, it was 2016 and the gin revival was in full swing. “We never intended to make gin. But people kept asking for it and so we thought why not?” They started producing their gin in May 2018 using honey from Abbie’s dad’s bees and lavender from a nearby farm. When I first met them in 2019 they admitted the gin business had distracted them