It has won countless awards, owns a huge range of spirits, sells through Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, and is part of a growing group of whiskey makers in England – but New Yorker Daniel Szor never intended to enter the beverage industry.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Biting Talk podcast, the founder of the Cotswolds distillery explains that their converted barn in Warwickshire “ was meant to be just a weekend place. ”
Szor, a former banker, escaped the frantic rush in 2014, “increasingly disenchanted with city life”. It was, he explains, “a Sunday afternoon in 2012; I looked out of my bedroom window at a field of barley that magically blew in the breeze.
The idea struck him: “There’s all this barley growing in the Cotswolds. Why has no one ever made whiskey? he remembers thinking, adding, “This is where things got crazy.”
Today he is one of some 20 English distillers who make whiskey, he says, “like they used to do.”
“I didn’t realize I was going into the beverage business,” he says. “I just liked whiskey and wanted to make it. I had a curious mixture of curious confidence and enormous ignorance. But if he found success and today produces a wide range of whiskeys, gins, liqueurs, sherry and vermouth, it was, he says, “really difficult in the early years. Financially, I wouldn’t wish what we’ve been through on my worst enemy.
You can hear Daniel Szor’s full interview on Biting Talk, which this week also features Peter Greig, director and co-founder of the visionary meat can company of Devon Pipers Farm, reflective food historian Mark Riddaway to the history of ingredients for sale at Borough Market, and Biting Talk resident mixologist Farhad Heydari. Click on the audio player above to listen.
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Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
This notice was published: 2020-12-04 08:31:54
