Monday, July 30, 2007

More English whisky

The BBC tells us:
The first whisky distillery to be built in England for over 100 years opens its doors to visitors next month but none of them will be able to taste a drop.

The English Whisky Company is to open a visitor centre at its £1m East Harling distillery in Norfolk on 18 August.

Production is well under way but the whisky has to mature and cannot be sold until at least Christmas 2009.

However, they will be able to see master distiller Iain Henderson at work.
But it is not clear that it is the first English distillery to be built for a century. I pointed readers to Lakeland Distillers back in a posting made in March of last year. And that company's website says:
Lakeland Distillers are building a single malt whisky distillery at Staveley near Kendal. With a small production capacity, we will be producing the first ever Lakeland Single Malt.

The distillery is situated on the banks of the River Kent, England’s fastest flowing river, using high quality barley. Every malt whisky has it’s own unique character depending on the ingredients used, the cask used for storage and surrounding environment.

The conditions at Barley Bridge are similar to the Highland region of Scotland. Lakeland single malt will be very special, the first ever to come from the English Lake District.
Maybe the Staveley distillery is not finished yet. Or maybe the BBC has got carried away.

Anyway, we wish both establishments the best of luck.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The proposed distillery at Staveley was never built and the project has now been abandoned, leaving the English Whisky Co. in Norfolk as the only registered and operating whisky distillery in England