The most interesting bottle of British whisky right now does not come from Islay or Speyside, but from a converted metal factory in Derbyshire.
Deep among the snow-dusted hills of the Peak District, on the banks of the River Derwent, lies a vast, former metalworks. A rusty old bridge connects a building – packed with stainless steel vats and shiny copper stills – to a warehouse, where hundreds of barrels of English whisky sit aging beneath a moss-covered corrugated roof.
Golden liquid flows into bottles where the glass of the neck is twisted, shaped to represent the wire cables that were once made here, before Max and Claire Vaughan took over the building in 2016. Late last year, their Wire Works Bourbon Barrel whisky was named The Whisky Exchange’s Whisky of the Year – the first time an English whisky has won the prize.
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“It certainly made a huge impact,” says Vaughan from his office overlooking the river. “We sold more of that particular release in a month than we normally do in nine.”
A decade ago, English whisky barely registered. The last historic English distillery closed in 1903 and it took more than a century before it saw a modern revival, when the English Whisky Company first laid down spirit in 2006. In 2024, that distillery won World’s Best Single Malt at the World Whisky Awards, a breakthrough moment for the category.
“Not only did it help sales but now there is a true understanding that English whisky is truly good whisky,” says Andrew Nelstrop, founder of The English Whisky Company. In 2025, his distillery released what it describes as the first English 18-year-old single malt, priced at £3,000 (approx. $4,086) a bottle, which sold out almost immediately.
In the Cotswolds, Daniel Szor takes me around Cotswolds Distillery, which he poured his life savings into in 2016 after his wife had a health scare. He decided to step away from a finance career in London.
“I thought with all the local barley grown here and 30 million visitors a year, and the way the brand of the Cotswolds appeals to aspirational people, we could do this,” he says, of his desire to launch a distillery.
American born Szor admits he modeled the distillery’s visitor center on nearby Soho Farmhouse, and the plan has clearly worked. It’s hard for us to find a seat in the restaurant, which is packed with both visitors and locals. More than 100,000 people visited the Cotswolds Distillery last year, many leaving with a bottle of what is now England’s highest-selling single malt by volume. In part that is down to a relatively accessible price point and Szor’s aggressive sales strategy that has secured listings in supermarkets and bars across the country.
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“I want to deliver value. I want to deliver a great flavor-to-price ratio. Big, deep flavor at the right price,” he says. “And I'm not embarrassed about making it available in supermarkets because I'm trying to build a brand which we can scale.”
At a recent whisky event I tasted five English whiskies, including the winning Wire Works and English Whisky Company bottles, as well as Spirit of Yorkshire’s Filey Bay Flagship, The Lakes Single Malt – owned by the team behind Nyetimber English sparkling wine – and Szor’s Cotswolds Signature. Guests were struck by the quality, variety, and price. Cotswold was a standout against the other winners.
A number of recent openings, including the Guy Ritchie-backed Rosemaund Farm Distillery, which launched in 2025, have brought the number of English distilleries laying down whisky to 71, according to the English Whisky Guild. Moreover, independent bottlers including reputable names such as Woven, The Heart Cut, and Compass Box have issued English whisky releases in the past year.
“We were the fourth [English distillery to open]. If you had said there would be another 60-odd to follow, I would never have believed it,” says Szor, whose recent Highgrove Evergreen Single Malt release was launched in conjunction with King Charles’s Highgrove Estate.
“What characterizes the English whisky scene is that the distilleries are all relatively small,” says White Peak’s Vaughan. “So, it gives us more flexibility to focus on how we look at things.” With 500 years of Scottish whisky-making experience to draw on, he argues, English producers are encouraged to differentiate. “One of the ways we can do that is through flavor – that’s a big part of it.”
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Nelstrop agrees: “The English industry is largely owned by founders – people who are generally excited and passionate,” he says. “North of the border, much of it is owned by PLCs and shareholders.”
“We don't release a whisky until it's perfect. We don't bottle a barrel unless it's perfect. If you are making millions and millions of liters, you just find a barrel that doesn't leak,” he says.
Now that England’s distilleries are a decade or so old, they are starting to produce age statements and are coming into their own. But there’s still a way to go before English whisky even puts a dent in the Scotch market. It’s estimated by the English Whisky Guild that the total production capacity of England’s whisky distilleries reached five million liters combined in 2025. Still, a single large distillery like The Macallan produces more than 15 million alone.
