In 1903 the Lea Valley Distillery in Stratford, east London, closed, and England — a country that had made whisky since at least the eighteenth century — stopped making it. For the next hundred years there was none. Then in 2006 a family of Norfolk farmers built a distillery and began again, and in the twenty years since, English whisky has gone from one distillery to more than fifty, acquired a trade body, applied for legal protection and begun, tentatively, to develop a character of its own. This piece sets out what has happened, who matters, and what English whisky is starting to taste like.
The England region page maps every distillery; this is the story of the category.
The hundred-year gap
England’s whisky history is thin but real. Distilleries operated in Bristol, Liverpool and London in the nineteenth century, mostly making grain whisky for blending, and some made malt. They closed for the same reasons Scottish distilleries closed in the same period — overproduction, consolidation, the Pattison crash — and with Scotland next door making more than enough, nobody thought to replace them. For a century “English whisky” was a contradiction, and the few attempts to revive it did not get past planning.
What changed was the craft spirits boom. From the 2000s, small distilleries opened across England to make gin, which can be sold the week it is made. Many of them, having built a still house, began laying down whisky as well, because whisky was where the long-term value was. The gin boom funded the whisky revival.
The pioneer
The English Whisky Company’s St George’s Distillery at Roudham in Norfolk, opened in 2006 by James and Andrew Nelstrop, was the first. It was built with help from Iain Henderson, formerly of Laphroaig, in a county that grows some of the best malting barley in Britain, and it released its first whisky in 2009. It makes both peated and unpeated malt in a style close to Speyside, and its early bottlings — sold as Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and so on — established that English single malt could be good. The English Whisky Co page has the story.
The second wave
Between 2014 and 2016 the distilleries that now define the category opened.
Cotswolds Distillery, founded in 2014 by Daniel Szor, a former currency trader, in a village near Shipston-on-Stour, makes a whisky from locally grown barley with a long fermentation and a wood programme heavy on red wine and sherry casks. Its Signature single malt, released in 2017, became the best-selling English whisky and the brand most likely to be found abroad. The Cotswolds page covers it.
The Lakes Distillery, opened in 2014 on a former farm in the Lake District, took a different route: under whisky-maker Dhavall Gandhi, formerly of Macallan, it built its identity on sherry-cask maturation and blending-style “elevation” of casks rather than on single-cask transparency. The Whiskymaker’s Reserve series established it as the category’s sherry specialist. The Lakes page has more.
Bimber, founded in 2015 in a west London industrial unit by Dariusz Plazewski, is the enthusiast’s favourite: floor-malted barley from a single farm, direct-fired stills, long fermentations, and bourbon-cask bottlings that sell out in minutes. Its single casks are the most sought-after English whisky at auction. The Bimber page covers it.
Behind them: Spirit of Yorkshire (Filey Bay), a farm distillery that grows its own barley; Cooper King in North Yorkshire; White Peak in Derbyshire; Circumstance in Bristol; Copper Rivet in Kent; Ad Gefrin in Northumberland; Dartmoor in Devon; Wire Works in the Peak District; and dozens more at various stages of laying down stock.
The Guild and the GI
In 2022 the larger producers formed the English Whisky Guild, a trade body, and applied to the government for a Geographical Indication — the same legal protection Scotch has had for a century. The proposed definition requires English whisky to be mashed, fermented, distilled and matured in England, from cereals, for at least three years in wooden casks of no more than 700 litres, bottled at 40 per cent or more, with no additives except caramel colouring. It permits a wider range of woods and grains than Scotch, reflecting the newer distilleries’ experiments.
The application has moved slowly and has been contested in detail — the Scotch Whisky Association objected to parts of it, and some English distilleries outside the Guild disagreed with others — and its status should be checked before relying on it. What is not in doubt is the intent: to stop “English whisky” being used for anything that is not, and to give the category a definition to build on.
What it tastes like
Too early to say for the category as a whole, but a few things are emerging.
English whisky is, by and large, young. Most distilleries have been producing for under a decade and their oldest stock is five or six years old. The style is therefore fresh, fruity and spirit-led, with the cask doing more work than it would in an older Scotch. Our maturation guide explains why English whisky, matured in a slightly warmer and drier climate than Scotland’s, tends to mature a little faster.
Barley provenance matters more than in Scotland. Several distilleries grow their own or source from named farms, and a few — Bimber, Filey Bay, Cotswolds — make a point of heritage or single-variety barley. The malting and mashing guide covers why the grain shows through more in a young whisky.
Experimentation is the norm. With no tradition to protect, English distillers use rye, wheat, beer yeasts, wine casks, chestnut and small casks freely, and the results range from excellent to odd.
The general profile, if there is one, is orchard fruit, cereal sweetness and vanilla, lighter than Highland Scotch and closer to a young Speyside or an Irish single malt. Peated English whisky exists but is a minority.
English grain and the blends
Almost all English whisky so far is single malt, which is unusual for a new category; Scotland and Ireland were built on blends. A few distilleries have begun to change that. Copper Rivet in Kent makes grain whisky from its own wheat alongside its Masthouse malt. Circumstance in Bristol uses column stills and a wide range of grains. And a small number of English blended whiskies have appeared, drawing on malt and grain from several English distilleries, which would have been impossible five years ago because there was nothing to blend. If the category follows the Scottish pattern, blends will eventually carry the volume and single malts the prestige; for now, the proportions are reversed, and English whisky remains a connoisseur’s category almost by construction. That may be no bad thing: the absence of a cheap blended tier has kept the category’s reputation intact while it finds its feet.
Where to start
Cotswolds Signature for the category’s calling card. The Lakes Whiskymaker’s Reserve for sherry depth. Bimber anything, if you can find it. Filey Bay Flagship for farm-to-glass transparency. English Whisky Co Original for the pioneer.
Our tasting notes are collected in the reviews as we publish them. The honest view is that English whisky is not yet competing with the best of Scotland on depth, because it has not had the time, and that its best distilleries are already making whisky worth drinking on its own terms. The next decade — as the 2015 and 2016 spirit passes ten years — is when the category will show what it has.
