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The Chase Family's Second Act: How Lorna Chase Is Putting English Single Malt on the World Whisky Map
There is a particular kind of audacity required to walk away from a £70 million spirits sale, spend three years watching your life's work get absorbed into a multinational corporation, and then calmly buy it all back — not to make vodka and gin this time, but to produce something that takes a decade to deliver. That is precisely what the Chase family has done at Rosemaund Farm in Herefordshire, England. And while the project carries a full cast of characters including a celebrated film director and a veteran master blender, it is Lorna Chase — co-founder, marketing director, and the restless creative force at the center of it all — who has emerged as one of the most compelling voices in the young and rapidly evolving story of English single malt whisky.
Rosemaund's Lorna Chase is quietly redefining what English single malt can be: rooted in real farming, patient aging, and a vivid sense of place. That description, deceptively simple on its surface, contains multitudes when you trace the arc of how this distillery came to exist at all — a tale of entrepreneurial triumph, a painful corporate sale, a quiet period of gestation, and ultimately, an unexpected homecoming.
From Potatoes to Pot Stills: The Chase Family's Long Road to Whisky
The Chases are not newcomers to either farming or distilling. In 2008, brothers James and Harry Chase, along with their father, William Chase, launched Chase Distillery on their family's land in Herefordshire, producing vodka and gin. That single-estate concept was genuinely ahead of its time. Chase Distillery won the "Best Vodka Award" at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2010 for its Chase vodka, a distinction that put a small Herefordshire farm operation on par with international spirits houses. Their gin became a calling card for the British craft gin renaissance — the venture became a driving force in the British gin renaissance, and the business was eventually sold to drinks giant Diageo shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic.
But quietly, in parallel with the vodka and gin work the public knew about, another project was being laid down — literally. Co-founder James explained that while they were creating gin and vodka during the Chase Distillery days, the distillers had been making batches of whisky every year from 2012. "It was really to express more creativity," he explains. "We really had to keep focused on gin and vodka, because that was paying the bills, but it meant that we also didn't have to talk or sell the whisky. It was such a long-term project." The 500 whisky casks the family had sold to Diageo never left the farm.
The sale of the business to Diageo in 2021 — reported to be in the region of 70 million pounds, though never officially disclosed — was a professional high point. It also felt like losing part of her own identity. For Lorna Chase, who had given years of her professional life building the Chase brand's global presence, the transition was more than just a business event. It was a severance from place, from purpose, and from something that felt like family. But the next chapter was already being written in oak.
The Diageo Chapter and the Unexpected Door It Left Open
When Diageo acquired Chase Distillery, the expectation among the family and the broader spirits community was that the corporation would invest heavily and build upon what was already working. James Chase later reflected: "When they phoned me to say they were moving the Chase brand to Scotland, my heart sank a little. They had invested so much in the distillery, so I thought they would be here for the long term. But I also knew there was a huge opportunity. So my brother and I bought back the stills and the casks."
Having sold the Chase business to Diageo — who subsequently moved production up to Scotland — the family saw a chance to bring the distillery back into their hands and rescue the whisky casks that Diageo had shown little to no interest in. Those 500 casks, quietly aging in Herefordshire's mild climate, were one of the great untold stories of the English whisky category. James noted the whisky had picked up the gentle aroma of apples from the orchards that surround the warehouse. He further explained that the English climate being more mild than Scotland produces a smooth, more gentle style; it is operating policy. There is no outside private equity dictating growth targets. As James Chase has said: "All the investment has been made in the distillery, there's no rush for us to go to market in an aggressive way. We want to keep things incredibly lean as we build the brand while keeping costs to a minimum. Our business model is ultimately for organic growth."
The Vision: Making English Whisky Feel Like Where It Comes From
Her hope is simple: that a new generation of drinkers will stay open-minded about whisky and find an English single malt that genuinely tastes of the farm from which it comes. In practice, that hope translates into a series of deliberate decisions: growing Maris Otter barley regeneratively on the estate, using the farm's own water source, aging casks in converted farm buildings rather than industrial warehouses, and releasing whisky only when it is ready rather than when commercial pressure demands it.
Chase oversees the story, sustainability, and product integrity across every touchpoint. In a distillery that has not yet fully recommenced production, and where the entire foundation rests on a finite cache of aged casks, product integrity is not merely a brand value — it is an existential concern. Every bottle released is one fewer in the vault. That constraint forces a discipline and a seriousness about quality that larger, more volume-driven operations sometimes lose.
The Team Behind the Liquid: Tristan Stephenson and the Craft of Blending English Malt
Spirits consultant Tristan Stephenson has joined the business as master blender, while film director Guy Ritchie collaborates through his WildKitchen food and drink construct at the farm. Stephenson, whose Black Rock bar in London became one of the most respected whisky venues in the world, brings both technical credibility and genuine enthusiasm for the category to Rosemaund. His approach to the blending process has been guided by a clear geographic and sensory brief.
As Stephenson has explained: "We wanted to make a whisky that really spoke of its place. Herefordshire is known for its orchards, so I looked for whiskies with apple and almond-meadowsweet notes — flavours that feel unmistakably English." This kind of intention — selecting casks not for generic quality but for the specific character that places them in Herefordshire rather than the Highlands — is the distillery's point of difference in a wider conversation about what English whisky can be.
Having just blended and bottled their first release, Stephenson and the team utilized the gargantuan bottling line — however, their new bottles (short and squat) didn't fit in a line designed for the tall, elegant Chase glass — so that too was done by hand on a single filling station. There is something appropriate about that image: a world-class blender and a pioneering farming family hand-filling bottles in a converted hop kiln, building a category from scratch one cask at a time.
Guy Ritchie, WildKitchen, and the Cultural Framing of English Whisky
Celebrity involvement in craft spirits can be a liability as much as an asset — a shortcut that signals commercial ambition over genuine passion. Rosemaund has been thoughtful about managing that perception. Although the Snatch and The Gentlemen director's involvement has garnered headlines and attracted consternation for being "just another celebrity-backed whisky," Ritchie has only a minority stake. After meeting via one of Ritchie's business partners, Chase said they immediately bonded over a shared love of farming and the countryside.
Alongside Chase and her family stands film director Guy Ritchie; not as a badge-on celebrity, but as a creative collaborator who has invested both capital and time in the project, designing the Wild Kitchen feasting tables and quietly weaving the whisky into his storytelling world. Ritchie's WildKitchen concept — communal outdoor dining over open fire — is a natural fit for a distillery that wants visitors to experience the full sensory landscape of Herefordshire, not just the whisky in isolation.
Ritchie has brought his WildKitchen al fresco dining concept to Rosemaund's revamped distillery visitor centre. "Folks will have this amazing tour and finish with a meal and a whisky over this communal table," James Dashwood Chase added. For American visitors willing to make the pilgrimage to Herefordshire, that kind of immersive experience — fire-cooked food, aged single malt, open countryside — speaks to a broader cultural appetite for provenance-driven luxury that is no longer confined to Napa Valley or the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
English Whisky's Wider Moment: Category, Context, and Competition
The Rise of a New Whisky Nation
There are 70 English whisky distilleries registered as of April 2026, 27 of which are members of the English Whisky Guild. That number would have seemed fantastical a decade ago. England now has its own place in the annals of whisky history, proudly boasting the Norfolk-based distillery St George's Well, established in 2006. The build-up to the first release of English single malt was palpable, and it just exploded onto the market. St George's was the modern pioneer, proving there was appetite for English malt at a time when the category barely existed in the commercial consciousness.
As of 2025, The Cotswolds Distillery is the largest English distillery by production, with an annual production of 500,000 litres. The category now has genuine scale at one end and genuine craft at the other. Rosemaund occupies a particular position: it is neither a startup finding its footing nor a production operation chasing volume. It is a mature, aged product with a finite initial supply, launching into a market that is only beginning to understand what English malt can mean.
The push for a Geographical Indication (GI) for English whisky — similar to the protected status that defines Scotch and Bourbon — is gaining momentum, and Rosemaund has positioned itself at the leading edge of that argument. As the English Whisky Guild pushes for a GI, James Chase has noted his support for the legislation and emphasized the importance of "that sense of place" which Rosemaund is championing: "I think it's great for the category... I believe over 50-60% of a flavour of a whisky comes from the location of where those casks are aged. And I think that's what an English category can define, and by keeping them on site, I think is where English whisky is really going to be held up and have a big point of difference to the Americans and Japanese."
The American Opportunity
American single malt whiskey has been developing its own identity rapidly, with the TTB now providing an official definition for the category and domestic producers from Washington State to New York making increasingly serious expressions. That context matters for understanding where English single malt fits in the American imagination. It is not Scotch. It is not American. It is something genuinely new — an Old World agricultural tradition filtered through a climate and a landscape that produce a different kind of maturation than the north of Scotland.
For the American drinker who has already explored Kentucky, who has a shelf's worth of Scotch, and who is beginning to look outward — to Japanese expressions, to Taiwanese malts, to Irish pot still whiskeys — English single malt represents the next frontier. And within that category, Rosemaund represents an argument for quality over convenience, for age over volume, and for the particular flavor of one specific farm in one specific English county.
Early tastings by specialist titles have already marked out the inaugural 10-year-old as a serious, distinctly English addition to the category. That reception matters in a market that remains skeptical by default of any whisky that doesn't carry a familiar national flag. English single malt needs ambassadors — voices that can translate the landscape of Herefordshire into a vocabulary that resonates with drinkers who have never left the Western Hemisphere. Lorna Chase has spent her career doing exactly that kind of work.
What Comes Next: Production, Growth, and the Long Game
The current stocks of aged spirit at Rosemaund are finite, which makes the restart of production not just a business decision but a philosophical one about the kind of distillery the Chase family wants to be over the next decade. Next year will see the release of 5,000 bottles across two ballots in spring and autumn, each tailored to reflect flavors of the season, growing to an outturn of 10,000 bottles in 2027. To support its growth, Rosemaund will look to begin distilling whisky again, producing an initial run of 200 casks over a three-month period.
Harry Chase — who manages the agricultural side of the business — is currently planting Maris Otter barley for harvest early next year, the team's aim being to eventually turn Rosemaund into an "estate" single malt whisky. An estate single malt — where every ingredient from grain to water is sourced from the property — would put Rosemaund in rare company globally. Very few distilleries anywhere in the world can make that claim honestly, and fewer still can make it while also demonstrating meaningful age in their liquid.
Production is due to start up this year, with wash from Hobson's Brewery kick-starting this renaissance and reflecting the original product's origin. At some point, the potato vodka machinery will be removed and a new mashing hall created so that everything can be done on site. It is the kind of gradual, deliberate transformation that mirrors the whisky-making process itself — slow, patient, and committed to a destination that will only reveal itself in full years down the road.
The Larger Meaning of Lorna Chase's Work
There is a tendency in whisky media to frame stories about women in the industry primarily through the lens of gender — as correctives to historical exclusion, or as inspiration for a new generation. That framing, while meaningful, can also flatten complexity. Lorna Chase's significance at Rosemaund is not reducible to the fact of her gender, even though her presence in a co-founder role at a serious distillery remains genuinely uncommon.
What makes her story interesting is the specific combination of skills and experiences she brings to a project that needs all of them simultaneously: the brand-building acumen refined over years at Chase Distillery, the deep personal connection to the land and the family that gives the storytelling its credibility, and the willingness to walk away from a lucrative exit and start again from a position of genuine conviction. She brings creative leadership, empathy, and a modern voice to a project that favors provenance and patience over scale. Those are not marketing abstractions. They are the actual operational values of a distillery that has chosen to sell 2,700 bottles by ballot rather than 20,000 bottles through a distribution deal.
The whisky industry — Scotch, American, and now English — is in the middle of a long reckoning with who gets to shape its future. The old gatekeepers are being joined, and in some cases replaced, by people who bring different perspectives to questions of flavor, identity, and what a bottle of aged spirit can mean to the person drinking it. Lorna Chase's hope is simple: that a new generation of drinkers will stay open-minded about whisky and find an English single malt that genuinely tastes of the farm from which it comes. In a category that has spent decades trying to establish itself on its own terms, that is exactly the right ambition.
The glass of Rosemaund in front of you — orchard-bright, softly spiced, carrying the particular mild sweetness of Herefordshire's apple-rich air — is not just a well-made whisky. It is an argument about what English single malt can be when the people behind it refuse to take shortcuts. Lorna Chase is making that argument one carefully chosen cask at a time.
