Side by side : Cooper King

Cooper King CKdistillery in Yorkshire has been distilling since 2019 releasing small batches of their whisky.

 Here I'll try five.

Cooper King 24 month old Maturing Malt

There are many milestones in a distillery's journey towards releasing a single malt, the penultimate one must be release of a 24 month old Maturing Spirit.

Cooper King have just done that and I was lucky enough to be sent a sample box!

Review of my whisky year - 2018

First of all thank you to all the people who have read my blog (c29,000 up from 16,500 last year) and followed me on Twitter (c1,680 up from 900 last year).

My highlights of 2018 were:

#GBMM2017 Cooper King Distillery & Tomatin Whisky

On Saturday 12th August Maltman Mike organised and ran a little whisky tasting shindig at the House Of Malt in Carlisle #GBMM2017! You can read the introduction here!

This is also my third in an occasional series about newer distilleries, this entry is about the Cooper King Distillery.

Abbie and Chris from Cooper King came over from Yorkshire to tell us all about the new distillery they are building! Obviously they didn't have anything for us to sample so Tomatin stood in with a bottle of their delicious Cask Strength!

Location

Cooper King Distillery is located in Sutton-on-the-Forest near York in North Yorkshire.

The distillery is being self-build on the site of an old stable block. When complete the distillery will house a production area and cask maturation warehouse, together with a rustic tasting room and well-stocked shop.

Photo : CooperKing

Photo : CooperKing

History

In 2014, a desire to leave the rat race Abbie and Chris crossed the globe to Australia, in search of sun, sand and adventure.

While living and working in Tasmania, a nearby distillery won World’s Best Single Malt Whisky, a feat never accomplished outside of Scotland or Japan. They began researching for a whisky blog for friends back home and visited a number of operational whisky distilleries. They had an incredible three months leading a bizarre double life. One day apple picking, sleeping in the boot of an estate car, eating cup-a-soup for dinner and living the true back-packer lifestyle. The next, staying in nice hotels, learning about all things whisky and meeting up with distillery owners and head distillers.

Eventually they were inspired to come home and build their own distillery! They took advice from Bill Lark, the godfather of Tasmanian whisky, and others they met on their travels.

The distillery name Cooper King comes from Chris’ great-great-grandfather Charles Cooper King, a Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Marine Artillery. They thought his adventurous spirit fitted the business perfectly. But there was a problem – they had to seek permission from the Cabinet Office to use the word ‘King’ in their company name!

Production Process

Cooper King have sourced their the custom-made 900 litre copper pot still from Tasmania and plan to use 100% Yorkshire barley combined with pure Yorkshire water in a 5-6 day fermentation period to produce a "distinctive malt spirit unlike any other in the UK".

The whisky will be matured, on site, in small 100 litre casks from "England's last Master Cooper" Alastair Simms of White Rose Cooperage locally in North Yorkshire.

Photo: YorkMix

They plan to distil their first spirit around Christmas 2017 producing around 3,500 bottles per year. Interestingly as they aren't in Scotland they are not bound by Scottish Oak maturation rules - they'll be able experiment with other woods!

Cooper King Distillery is striving to be a green distillery running on 100% green energy, they will also plant a tree for every membership sold to offset carbon emissions. There are a four levels of membership through their Founder's Club offering a number of rewards to investors!

It was great to meet Abbie and Chris at the #GBMM2017 at The House of Malt and I'm really looking forward to visiting their distillery and trying their whisky when it has becomes available!

Website

Link to the distillery website

Visit

Not open yet but planning to being the new year!

Contact

email : info@cooperkingdistillery.co.uk

phone : +44 (0)1347 808232 

Now obviously they didn't have any whisky for us to try, so a slightly older distillery stepped in to help! Tomatin donated a bottle of their cask Strength for us to enjoy whilst we listened to Abbie and Chris' presentation.

Whisky : Tomatin Cask Strength (NAS)
Characteristics : 57.5% ABV, NCF, Non-coloured
Price : £50 widely available
Colour : Dark Gold
Nose : Honey and red fruit - strawberries and raspberries, the strength comes through in the nose and there is a background of sherry.
Palate : Mouth filling, oily, more honey and fruit. Quite spicy - a hint of ginger?
Finish : Drying and very spicy.
Overall : A wonderful sipping dram, would be great in front of a roaring fire but all I had was a gang of bloggers! I think we all enjoyed this one!
Link : Cask Strength

Back to the #GBMM2017 introduction!

#GBMM2017 Introduction

On Saturday 12th August Maltman Mike organised and ran a little whisky tasting shindig at the House Of Malt in Carlisle #GBMM2017!

As you can see from the logo there was going to be a good turn out from some of the newer distilleries as well as the more established and of course a great bottler.

Twenty free tickets were made available and all were snapped up quite quickly - as well as the usual band of dodgy bloggers and vloggers there were some locals visiting the House of Malt shop in Carlisle for some free drams.

This blog gives an overview of the evening and I'll do more in-depth blogs of each of the dram providers!

The Great Big Malted Meetup 2017 took place at The House Of Malt in Carlisle

The shop is owned by Ben, Mike works there! They sell a large range of whiskies, gins and vodkas and an ever growing range of craft beers. They also sell online from www.houseofmalt.co.uk

Photo @JWBassman_

It's a great venue to hold a whisky tasting..

Inside The House of Malt

...but we actually started off with some Temu Gin, House of Malt have a UK exclusive on this Monk distilled gin all the way from Finland!

Crafted from rare wild forest ingredients
deep in the Finnish Taïga—the last
primitive, untamed forest
wilderness of the North

The meet up was due to start at 7pm but all those thirst bloggers turned up early to swap samples, meet face-to-face for the first time and share stories. It was really great to meet people for the first time when your only previous contact had been over twitter!

All the bloggers sat at the back of the room leaving the front for the locals!

Blogger's Corner! Photo @JWBassman_

It was great to meet Grimm @GentlemanGrimm, Vin @NNWhisky, John @JWBassman_, Daniel  @Whisky_Viking and Sarah @iheartwhisky for the first time 'in the flesh'.

A few samples were exchanged, some from secret suitcases!

Sample Suitcase!

As each of the distillery / bottler reps arrived introductions were made, more samples were tried and stories swapped (we hadn't even started for real!).

The drams to be tasted were lined up, unfortunately the Lakes Distillery were a little late so I didn't get them included in the line-up:

Part of the line up!

The plan for the night was:

• Abbie and Chris from Cooper King, but drinking a dram from Tomatin (Read more here!)

• Jan from Douglas Laing (Read more here!)

• Chris from The Lakes Distillery (Read more here!)

• Maltman Mike and me presenting Wolfburn (Read more here!)

I'll add links to the individual blog entries above over the next few days!

Lots of whisky was drunk, some cake was eaten (some people ate a lot more than some others!) and real as opposed to on-line friendships made!

Me, John, Vin & Grimm

It was a fantastic evening, many thanks to Maltman Mike for organising, House Of Malt for use of their beautiful premises, the dram suppliers Tomatin, Douglas Laing, Lakes Distillery & Wolfburn, Cooper King for driving all the way over from Yorkshire to tell us about their plans and all my fellow tasters for making it great!