Rosemaund: The whisky that almost never was

I’m having a drink in a tent in a field.

The field adjoins Rosemaund Farm Distillery, situated in the vast acreage of Herefordshire farmland under Chase family ownership.

The tent is a permanent gazebo housing its ‘wild kitchen’ and dining area, stamped with the seal of Rosemaund supporter Guy Ritchie’s catering company Cashmere Caveman.

The drink is a sample of the Director’s Cut, Rosemaund’s third single malt release since reopening in 2025 and its first to be made available for general sale following two ballot-only bottlings. Combining bourbon, oloroso and new oak casks, it’s jammy with notes of fresh blackcurrants and apples, leafy hedgerows, brasil nuts, prunes and Sachertorte.

Seated opposite me is the effervescent Lorna Chase, who manages the distillery alongside her brother-in-law James Dashwood-Chase. They have been involved since its foundation in 2007 as the Chase Distillery, a farm diversification scheme that ballooned into a household name.

Their progress in whisky has been more sedate — and secretive. The first casks were laid down at Rosemaund in 2012, but the family didn’t share their single malt project publicly. When the distillery was sold to Diageo in 2021, part of its buy-out of the Chase gin and vodka brands, the fate of those casks hung in the balance.

“It might never have seen the light of day,” Lorna says. “That is quite magical.”

Multinational influence

Chase Distillery started out with a convention-busting potato vodka, distilled from tubers that didn’t make the grade for the family’s Tyrrell’s crisp brand. Back then “craft vodka” was a tough sell, Lorna says but an article in UK tabloid The Sun precipitated a meteoric rise in demand. The Chase gin range followed, and at its peak the distillery was turning out 30,000 bottles a day. 

Such success turns heads. Diageo came knocking and acquired the brands and distillery in 2021. Lorna becomes a touch melancholic when we speak about the buy-out. “We had no idea what was coming,” she says. The family had sold Tyrrell’s a few years earlier, and the acquiring company had taken a sympathetic approach to managing the brand. This experience was different.

In 2025, after Diageo announced it would be moving production of the Chase products to its grain plant at Cameronbridge in Scotland, members of the Chase family clubbed together to buy the distillery back. The new team includes Lorna, James, and chief engineer-turned-distilley manager Will Skinner. “We all walked back in and it was like we never left,” Lorna smiles.

Remaking Rosemaund

As if in defiance of the efficiency with which the site had run under multinational ownership, the stillhouse now has a homely, lived-in feel. Lorna and I take coffee on comfortingly worn couches in the stillhouse, clustered around a panoramic window; we don’t rush.

Don’t let the decor fool you, though — this is still a working site. In May 2026, Rosemaund’s 2,500-litre still Fat Betty (previously used for vodka production) roared back into life to start distilling single malt spirit. Their wash, produced with Maris Otter barley, is currently made off-site, but Lorna says there are plans afoot to bring mashing and fermentation back in-house using existing equipment.

Ex-Roe and Co distiller Lora Hemy came onboard to help design their new distilling process and develop the house style; with the Maris Otter, they’re looking for something flavourful and fruit-forward. Bartending and spirits maestro Tristan Stephenson is also involved as consulting master blender (the three releases to date are all his handiwork).

For all Diageo’s foibles, Lorna concedes the company looked after their whisky well. It overhauled the maturation regime and moved the casks into a dedicated warehouse, ensuring consistent temperatures, good air circulation, and fastidious record-keeping. 

Prior to the takeover, Lorna explains they had been trialling a “honeypot” maturation technique adopted from Japan, whereby casks were moved between cold and warm storage to encourage greater wood extraction. While achieving its goal, the method had a severe impact on evaporation; Lorna says one honeypot cask from 2014, used for their Orchard Cut release, had lost 80% of its contents in a decade.

In total the distillery laid down 500 casks from 2012 to 2021, of which about 30 have now been bottled. Since the first casks were filled, English whisky has blossomed from a novelty into a category. It’s a community the Chases are proud to be part of. Lorna says the movement has been very welcoming, adding, “It is like we are working towards something bigger than ourselves.”

The way she talks about Rosemaund’s single malts — as something honest and generous — echoes this sentiment. She wants it to add meaningfully to the English whisky landscape: “Real place, real purpose, real people, plus a way to make it on the global stage.”