Our Story

It started with a field of barley. Our founder, Dan Szor, looked out at a field in the Cotswolds and wondered why nobody was making whisky from it. In July 2014, the distillery opened its doors. Whisky takes time, so gin came first. We distilled 150 individual botanical spirits, created more than 60 recipes and chose one. Cotswolds Dry Gin was born.

After three years of waiting, in October 2017 we released Cotswolds Signature Single Malt, the first whisky ever distilled in the Cotswolds. Made from Cotswolds barley, it's still the bottle at the heart of our range.

Our single malt range kept growing, with the four expressions of our Cask Collection and hand-picked single casks. In 2020 we launched the first in our Hearts & Crafts series, a yearly limited edition inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, which has deep roots here in the Cotswolds.

Golden Wold became the first release in our Harvest series, a whisky that celebrates the barley grown around us.

In January we opened our new £3 million distillery, four times the size of the original. It gave us capacity for 500,000 litres of pure alcohol a year. Later that year we launched Highgrove, made in partnership with the Highgrove Estate.

We turned ten. In August we opened our wetlands, a natural system that treats around three quarters of our wastewater, cuts tanker traffic and gives wildlife a new home. It was built with Living Water Ecosystems and Rachael White Designs, with support from Berry Bros. & Rudd.

English Whisky was granted protected Geographical Indication status, joining Scotch, Welsh and Irish whisky as a recognised category. The same year, Tripadvisor named us a Travellers' Choice.