English Whiskey Coming to America

By Richard Thomas

As recently as the 1990s, whiskey-making was an entirely Scottish thing on the island of Britain, with the art becoming largely defunct in Wales and Scotland for most of the 20th Century. That started changing in the ’00s. Now Wales has a distillery in the form of Penderyn, and at least three distilleries are operating in England.

Adnams Brewery has turned to distilling with the intent of making whiskey, but does not have any as of yet. Down in Cornwall, there is the Hicks and Healey single malt, while St. George’s Distillery in Norfolk is by far the busiest of the English whiskey-makers. And now they are coming to America.

St. George’s recently announced that they would expand into the American market in mid-April, with their English offerings appearing in select areas of the eastern seaboard. St. George’s and the English Whisky Company were started in 2006, and in so doing became the first new distillery in England in 120 years. Founder James Nelstrop comes to whiskey-making from the grain side of things, with his family tracing its farming and grain-processing heritage back some six centuries. When Nelstrop decided to start his own family distillery, they persuaded distiller Iain Henderson of Laphroaig to postpone retirement, help get them started, and to train his replacement, David Fitt.

From that starting point, St. George’s has gone on to build a solid reputation around their “Chapter” series of whiskeys, as well as their periodic releases of whole casks for sale. The distillery has earned multiple awards from The Spirits Business, as well as a Liquid Gold Award from Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible in 2011.