The Cotswolds Distillery
| Industry | Distillery |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founder | Daniel Szor |
| Headquarters | United Kingdom |
|
Area served
|
World Wide |
| Products |
English whiskey Gin |
| Website | www |
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. Situated in a 5-acre site in Stourton, Warwickshire, its focus is distilling single malt whisky. It is one of only six distilleries producing English whisky.
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, Kavalan in Taiwan and The Milk & Honey Distillery in Israel). 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 initiative 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.
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. Severn Trent 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.
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