If England’s Whisky Industry Is Thriving, Why Is It Still Struggling to Gain Recognition in the U.S.?
The 21st-century whisky boom that has swept the globe has taken root in dozens of countries, from Israel and India to Finland and France. And it includes England, the nearest neighbor to that juggernaut of all whisky-making nations, Scotland.
England’s modern whisky industry is barely 20 years old, but it’s in full flower. (Several English distilleries made whisky in the 19th century but all were closed by 1905.) The country has 60 distilleries actively making whisky, most of them opened in the last decade, according to Morag Garden, CEO of the English Whisky Guild. Collectively, they produce 3.5 million liters of pure alcohol annually, the bulk of it single malt but also including styles made from rye, wheat, oats, and other grains. Although sales are currently modest (50,000 9-liter cases annually, according to Garden), in 2023 the English Whisky Guild forecast that by 2024 the industry would have 50,000 casks maturing with a future sales potential of 1 billion pounds. (The Guild is currently compiling data for an updated forecast.)
Around 40 percent of English whisky sales are to export markets, including France, Australia, Japan, Canada, and the United States, which is a small segment right now but highly desirable, as it buys more super-premium whiskies, like single malt Scotch, than anywhere else. English distilleries targeting American consumers are trying to carve out a niche but face challenges: the newness of the category, competitiveness of a saturated market, and prices that consumers are increasingly reluctant to pay. But English whiskies also have distinct advantages that, if matched with the right consumers, could pay big dividends in the category’s growth.
A Familiar Place
Unlike other newer whisky countries like Germany or Denmark, England’s shared language with the United States offers consumers a comfortable point of entry — as does the fact that the two nations have strong historic and cultural ties.
“People understand that region of the world,” says Holly Seidewand, co-owner of First Fill Spirits, a retailer in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., that specializes in world whisky. “It’s very comfortable from a geography standpoint. It clicks for people.” Seidewand notes that family history and heritage become a connection point for some American consumers of English whisky. “It’s emotional,” she adds.
Although England as a brand is strong, many distilleries get more specific in self-identification, highlighting their regions of origin — places that carry added layers of association for Americans who may have visited on vacation or who know the area from movies and TV. There’s Bimber Distillery Single Malt London Whisky, Spirit of Yorkshire, Cotswolds Single Malt, and The Lakes Single Malt, among many other examples. All note that they are a “Product of England,” but let their regional moniker lead.
“The broad theme is a sense of place — provenance,” Garden says. “That is a common value within English whisky.” She points out that a number of English distillers also farm their own grain, and the more specific branding helps showcase that. “It’s part of their storytelling,” she says.
Filey Bay Distillery, which makes Spirit of Yorkshire Single Malt, is a case in point. The distillery’s founders grow all their grain and initially started a brewery before deciding to make whisky as well. The distillery opened a visitor center in 2017, years before it had mature product to sell, and welcomes 25,000 tourists annually.
“When you’re selling whisky, you’re selling the story, the background, the people,” says Filey Bay co-founder David Thompson, who calls tourism a “massive part” of the business. “Obviously, in the first three years when you don’t actually have single malt to sell them, you have to sell them the story.”
Now that Filey Bay’s aged whisky is available, tourism has taken on added importance in the brand’s marketing and sales strategy. “We do a lot of [international] market visits to spread the word,” Thompson explains, adding that often, people he’s met overseas will show up at the distillery months later. “It’s a lovely feeling to think that you’ve invited that sort of interest in people to actually come right over the pond and see us,” he says. “It’s a real testament to everything we’re doing.”
“They have a deeper, diverse portfolio even if they don’t have the volume. They know they have to be different because they’re so close to Scotland. That helps a lot, because there’s always something new from England that we can bring in.”
Similar trends have taken shape at Bimber and especially at Cotswolds Distillery, which was purpose-built as a tourist destination and hosts 100,000 visitors a year — a serious chunk of the total 250,000 people who visit English whisky distilleries annually, according to the English Whisky Guild. Seidewand, who also runs a business planning and leading tours to whisky regions of the world, says that she may add a tour of English distilleries in the near future. One of the Guild’s focus areas is tourism, and Garden hopes to create distillery trails in different regions of the country, showcasing both distilleries and other places of interest to whisky lovers, like bars and museums. “Tourism creates new brand ambassadors,” she says.
Innovation and Flavor
Like other up-and-coming world whiskies, England’s distilleries offer consumers novelty. “The joy of sharing discovery — that’s what we can offer, in terms of being way better than anybody thought a whisky that doesn’t have bagpipes and kilts on the label could be,” says Daniel Szor, an American ex-derivatives trader who started Cotswolds Distillery from a personal love of whisky. “I can go into a room of whisky geeks and say, ‘I was one of you guys. I just took it a step too far. I built a distillery and I did it out love and out of a care of flavor.’”
Pursuit of new flavor is practically baked into the English whisky model, partly because most producers want to stand apart from their northern neighbor. Scotch whisky is made according to strict rules, but until recently, English whisky had nothing in writing to constrain it, although distilleries largely adhered to the common standards of the European Union, including that whisky must be made from cereal grains and aged for at least three years.
Still, that left a lot of room for experimentation and innovation. Like in Ireland, English whisky may be aged in barrels made from woods other than oak, something Abingdon Distillery, located near Oxford, is doing with chestnut casks. Grain whisky makes up a small but dynamic segment of the category, often incorporating flavorful malted rye or other malted grains. Bristol’s Circumstance Distillery makes multiple grain whiskies, blending them into a flagship product, while Adnams, on the country’s east coast, offers Triple Malt, distilled from a single mash bill featuring barley, wheat, and oats. And distilleries all over the country are using hyper-local ingredients, tweaking fermentation times and yeasts, and employing unusual cask finishes to impart novel flavors on their spirits.
Importers and retailers that offer English whisky are enthusiastic about educating consumers, but warn that the category — like all whiskies right now — is struggling with shelf placements as spirits sales slow overall and consumers become more deliberate about spending.
Alongside experimentation, English whisky makers have prioritized sustainability to an impressive degree, underscoring the agriculturally-minded values of the industry. Producers have also largely focused on premium-and-above products, targeting whisky connoisseurs with single casks and high ABVs, and keeping quality paramount. “The whisky is really solid and there’s lots of different flavor profiles — a lot for people to explore,” Seidewand says, noting that a steady stream of new offerings helps keep the category fresh for consumers. “They have a deeper, diverse portfolio even if they don’t have the volume. They know they have to be different because they’re so close to Scotland. That helps a lot, because there’s always something new from England that we can bring in.”
Price and Other Challenges
Although English whisky distilleries all want to stand on their own merits, in the U.S., comparisons to Scotch are inevitable, mostly because American consumers broadly hear “single malt” and think “Scotch,” says Sam Filmus, president of ImpEx Beverages, which imports Spirit of Yorkshire. “There’s a limited understanding of what English whisky is,” he explains, although consumers who try it are “surprised by how much they enjoy it and intrigued by the idea of Yorkshire single malt.” The challenge, he adds, is to help American consumers understand English whisky more broadly.
Importers and retailers that offer English whisky are enthusiastic about educating consumers, but warn that the category — like all whiskies right now — is struggling with shelf placements as spirits sales slow overall and consumers become more deliberate about spending. Glass Revolution Imports brings in Bimber, and founding partner Raj Sabharwal says that there was strong uptake on the brand’s first release of its bourbon-cask-matured single malt. “But the second one is languishing,” he says. “There’s a whole pushback on things that are over $100 retail — people are shying away from it.”
Indeed, price is a sticking point for many English whiskies. Seidewand calls it “the most common deterrent” for the category. Because distillers have deliberately targeted the premium and super-premium tiers, most of the English whiskies that have made it to U.S. shores sit at around $100, and sometimes above. Those that can go lower are sometimes doing so on minimal margins, banking on the payoff of a longer-term strategy.
For example, Cotswolds Distillery’s core Signature Single Malt is around $60. “I know I’m not going to make money out of it for years,” Szor says. “But I have to build the market — not go bankrupt, but I have to somehow do this. The vision I’m selling investors is, ‘if you believe in this concept, we have to do it this way.’”
The Promise of a GI
One way in which English whisky does aim to emulate Scotch: establishing a geographical indication, or GI. The English Whisky Guild has applied for formal GI status with the United Kingdom’s government, which is currently accepting public feedback on the proposal.
The benefits of a GI are twofold. “It’s legal protection so nobody can come in and brand something English whisky if it isn’t so,” Garden says. A GI establishes a level of trust that the whisky in the bottle matches its label.
The current sales environment for spirits isn’t exactly promising, and it’s even more discouraging for new brands, let alone whole new styles, without an established consumer base.
And formalizing and communicating clear guidelines can help build consumer awareness and knowledge, which pays dividends in the long run. “It’s a great additional story — it shows that English whisky is a community,” Seidewand says. “It shows that the conversation is bigger than most people realize, and that’s exciting.”
But the English whisky GI has stirred up controversy north of the border. After the proposal reached the consultation phase in late February, the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), a trade group, raised objections to a part of the GI for single malt that allows the mashing and fermentation processes to occur at a site separate from distillation. In Scotland, all the stages of single malt creation, from mashing to distillation, must take place at a single site. The SWA contends that allowing English single malt whisky to deviate from this practice would damage the reputation of single malt Scotch.
The issue at stake is personal for Thompson of Filey Bay. “We were farmers and brewers first and our brewery is on the farm,” he says, explaining that when it came time to open the distillery, Filey Bay chose a site two miles away in the village, which was more beneficial for tourist traffic. “We do mashing and fermentation at the brewery, then tank it down the road to our distillery,” Thompson adds, pointing out that Filey Bay retains more control than many Scotch distilleries because it casks and matures all the whisky on-site, whereas in Scotland it’s common for those processes to take place far from the point of distillation.
Despite the objections of the SWA, Garden feels confident that the GI will go through by the end of the summer. One of the regulation’s notable stipulations is the use of U.K.-grown grain, something no other U.K. whisky — whether from Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland — requires. “We want to talk about provenance and sense of place and that starts with the cereal grain,” she says.
Even with a GI, it will likely take years and a lot of hard work for English whisky to gain more than a foothold in the U.S. The current sales environment for spirits isn’t exactly promising, and it’s even more discouraging for new brands, let alone whole new styles, without an established consumer base. And English whisky as a whole is still a tiny category, despite the Guild’s projections.
But distillers are optimistic that Americans will come around — it’ll just take persistence and patience. In addition to its whisky, Cotswolds Distillery offers a London dry gin that currently represents 60 percent of its U.S. sales. “Selling an English gin in America is like pushing on a door that opens easily. People expect gin to be English,” Szor says. “Selling English whisky is like pushing on a door that maybe gives an inch every year. But you’ve got to keep your shoulder against it and keep on pushing.”
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