I was reading about the new English whiskies dropping this September — six or seven releases, all from different corners of the country. One comes from a distillery near the Cornish cliffs that uses local barley and seaweed-smoked malt. Another is from a former dairy farm in Derbyshire, where the stills hum next to a goat shed.
They’re calling it a 'maturation experiment' — some finished in barrels that held English sparkling wine, one in oak that held Somerset cider. No one’s pretending it’s Islay. But they’re not apologising either.
I tried a sample last week in Oakland. It tasted like damp wool, honey, and a faint memory of argument with a customs officer in Dover. Good stuff. Not cheap. Not meant to be.
