A potato farmer’s second brand.

Chase began with a crisp company. William Chase, a Herefordshire potato farmer, founded Tyrrells in Leominster in 2002, and in April 2008 sold a majority stake in it to the private-equity firm Langholm Capital, according to English Wikipedia. The proceeds of that sale paid for the distillery, Drinks International reported in January 2025.

The idea came out of the crisp business. In a 2011 interview with The Guardian, Chase said that while running Tyrrells he had tonnes of rejected small potatoes that could not be used, and went looking for something to make from them; the answer was vodka. Diageo’s 2020 announcement dates the founding of Chase Distillery to 2008, on Chase Farm in Herefordshire.

English Wikipedia, citing contemporary reports, says the first potatoes for the spirit were harvested in spring 2008, the first batch of vodka was made that June and gin followed late the same year. The vodka was batch-made in a copper pot still, and Diageo’s announcement repeated the company’s figure of 250 British potatoes in every bottle. The farm also grew cider apples: English Wikipedia says Willy’s Cider, first made in 2009, became the base for the apple-spirit gins.

The family ran the business into its second decade. When Diageo’s deal was announced in October 2020, the statement from the company carried a note signed by James Chase, and William Chase was quoted in Diageo’s own release.

Potatoes, apples and a field-to-bottle claim.

The range grew from one vodka into a farm-based family of spirits. Diageo’s October 2020 release counted seven gins, four vodkas and an elderflower liqueur. It named Chase GB Gin and Chase Original Potato Vodka as the leading products, alongside flavoured gins including Pink Grapefruit & Pomelo, Seville Marmalade and Rhubarb & Bramley Apple.

The gins came from two bases. English Wikipedia says Chase GB Extra Dry Gin used Chase Vodka as its base spirit, while Williams Elegant gin was distilled from apple spirit. Diageo described Williams Elegant 48 as made with 48 apple varieties from 200-year-old orchards.

Much of the brand story was about the farm itself. Diageo’s release said the distillery’s steam came from a biomass boiler fuelled with prunings from the apple orchards, and that potato waste went back onto the farm as fertiliser and to its cattle. The family summed this up as “field to bottle,” and the label design of 2018 was built around that idea.

That redesign, Drinks International reported on 3 October 2018, marked the brand’s tenth anniversary. The vodka and gin bottles carried embossed Chase Distillery branding, with line drawings of potato roots on the vodka and botanicals on the gin. “250 Single-Estate Potatoes” was embossed on the base, copper accents at the top and bottom of the bottle referred to the distillery’s copper pot stills, and a perforated label edge alluded to the Penny Red, Britain’s first perforated postage stamp. James Chase, then global brand ambassador, said the aim was to “unite our gin and vodka under the same premium design and reinforce our ‘field to bottle’ message.” The new bottles went into national and international distribution that month.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all English gin names: Chase, Warner’s, Silent Pool, Bloom, Opihr, Portobello Road and Hayman’s. English gin brands sit at many different points in the trade, from family distillers and farm businesses that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single gin can be sold everywhere from a supermarket shelf to a cocktail bar.

A gin brand’s identity is usually carried less by the spirit itself than by a bottle, a label and the place it names, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its distillery or had its gin made under contract somewhere else. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its gin is actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its gin is made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From a Herefordshire farm to Fife.

On 26 October 2020 Diageo announced that it had agreed to buy Chase Distillery, with completion expected in early 2021 subject to regulatory clearance. William Chase said in the release: “It’s inspiring to have Diageo invest in Chase Distillery’s future.” Dayalan Nayager, then managing director of Diageo Great Britain, called it a “quintessentially British portfolio of high quality, crafted brands.” A Diageo spokesperson later dated the purchase to 2021, and Diageo has owned Chase since 2021.

The farm did not remain the home of the spirit. Drinks International reported on 10 January 2025 that Diageo had closed the Chase Distillery in Herefordshire and moved production to its Cameronbridge distillery in Fife, Scotland, where Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Gordon’s and Johnnie Walker are also made. The move had first been disclosed the previous June. A Diageo spokesperson said: “Since acquiring Chase in 2021, we have seen substantial change in the vodka and gin categories,” and that the company had decided to “renovate the liquid, revitalise the packaging” and transform the brand’s supply. The magazine reported that the 17 people working at the distillery were offered other roles within Diageo or redundancy.

The name, the farm story and the copper-accented bottle of 2018 all came from Herefordshire; since January 2025 the spirit has been made in Fife, by an owner that has said it is reworking both the liquid and the packaging.

For a design guide, Chase Distillery shows how a farm-to-bottle story can be written into the bottle itself — roots, botanicals, a potato count on the base and a postage-stamp edge — and how that story is tested when production moves. Compare Tyrrells, the crisp brand William Chase founded first, and Tanqueray, the Diageo gin made at the same Fife site. For this guide we use still copper, field loam and potato cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chase Distillery’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.