Round Hill Harvest: From Landscape to Canvas, and Canvas to Cask
Every year, our Harvest Series begins in the same place: a landscape, and someone who can capture it. This year, that someone was Jeffrey Pratt, an Oxfordshire artist whose painting has shaped our fifth release, Round Hill Harvest.
A whisky inspired by the land
Round Hill Harvest, our fifth release in the Harvest service, is matured in ex-maple syrup casks and Spanish oak Oloroso hogsheads, with a subtle hint of peat. It's a rich, full-bodied whisky, layered with malt loaf and sweet maple on the nose, softening into soda bread, fudge and salted caramel, before finishing with cacao, demerara sugar and gentle herbal peat. Distilled from 100% local Cotswolds barley, it's bottled at 55% ABV, with just 1,200 bottles available.
The painting behind the bottle
The artwork on the tube of this release comes from Past Traitor's Ford, painted by Oxfordshire based artist, Jeffrey Pratt. Jeffrey works en plein air, painting directly from the landscape rather than from a studio, an approach he believes lets him capture a scene in a way that simply isn't possible any other way. Past Traitor's Ford reflects that: open fields, natural textures, changing light, and a quiet sense of history that feels distinctly Cotswolds.
The connection came through Alice, our Distillery Manager and the person behind the whisky itself, who brought Jeffrey's work into the series.
Landscape, canvas, whisky, flavour, people
That's the thread that runs through every Harvest Series release, and Round Hill Harvest is no exception. We celebrated with our launch dinner at the distillery on 17th September, with food cooked by @thewildoven straight out of their Land Rover Defender. Wild Oven brought their signature approach of cooking outdoors, over fire, using seasonal, local ingredients, and worked in produce of our own too: whisky and honey straight from our bees in the distillery wetlands, alongside seasonal, local ingredients, into a slow-cooked pork collar, an orchard apple and pear salad, and a wood-fired orchard crumble finished with a whisky crème diplomat.
Being able to produce our whisky right here makes us proud to call the Cotswolds home. Moments like these, bringing people, place and whisky together around the table, are what it's really all about.
Our Head Mixologist's Take
We spoke to Oliver Morris, our Head of Mixology to discuss the flavours of Round Hill. “What I love about Round Hill Harvest is how the richness of the maple and honeyed notes is balanced by layers of orchard fruit, cacao, vanilla, and a gentle smokiness from the peat. From a mixology perspective, it gives you plenty to work with.
For our Harvest launch dinner, I wanted to create two serves that celebrated the whisky's character while exploring its different flavour profiles.
The first was a refreshing Woodsman highball with carbonated birch water and toasted walnut bitters, finished with freshly expressed orange oil and the orange peel placed in the glass. The delicate freshness of the birch water lifts the whisky, while the walnut bitters complement its richer, nutty notes. The orange oils add a beautiful citrus aroma, bringing another dimension to the serve.
For the second, I took inspiration from the whisky's cask maturation, creating a Firekeeper Aperitif with oloroso sherry. Stirred down and fine-strained into a chilled Nick & Nora glass, it's served without ice and finished with a Cotswolds whisky peated mist as the spritz garnish. The sherry adds depth and richness, complementing the maple and vanilla notes, while the aromatic mist enhances the whisky's gentle peat smoke.
Both cocktails were designed to let the whisky take centre stage, demonstrating how a carefully considered serve can reveal different layers of flavour without losing the character of the spirit itself.”
Where to find it
Round Hill Harvest is available now online and in our three Cotswolds stores.
Whether you've followed the Harvest Series from the beginning or you're discovering it for the first time, Round Hill Harvest is a fitting fifth chapter: a landscape, captured on canvas, and carried through into the glass.