We love … Chase Distillery
Chase Distillery makes potato vodka with roots
The more evidence there is of major corporations sneaking illicit ingredients into our food chain, the more important provenance becomes in the food and drink industries. Consumers now look for products where they can be confident there are no lies on the label. Nobody is interested in imported neutral grain spirit (NGS) being redistilled with a few juniper berries from the bush around the corner thrown in. People now look to drink something real, crafted by real people, from real and traceable ingredients.
The Chase family story is a great example of this emphasis on the real. After almost two centuries of farming in Herefordshire the family was declared bankrupt, succumbing to the supermarket pricing wars of the 1990s. Looking for a new direction they found success in 2002 with the creation of Tyrells crisps. In 2004 they made a bold and unprecedented decision to refuse Tesco’s offer to stock their produce.
Then, during a trip to the USA to research new methods for crisp production William Chase discovered a distillery making vodka from locally grown potatoes that were too small for making crisps. He hurried back to Herefordshire with the idea, pitched it to his family, who then set about building a distillery on their farm with a bespoke 70ft tall rectifying column fitted with 42 bubble plates, reportedly the tallest rectifying column in the world.
Their potato-based vodka is made by breaking down and fermenting a mash of Rosetta and Lady Claire potatoes into a 10% ‘potato wine’, which is then distilled to 96.5%. This distillate is then diluted with water from a well on the family’s farm and redistilled with locally sourced botanicals before the tails being cut at 65% and diluted again down to 40%.
A philosophy of provenance and sustainability runs through everything that the family does and influences everything, from distillery practices to ingredients. Marketing Director James Chase says they choose the potato varieties due to their higher starch content because they produce more sugar and thus cause less waste water to be produced in the distilling process. He proudly states, “the by-products of the distillation process are all recycled. The spent mash is used to feed (his brother) William’s livestock, boilers and vehicles on the farm run on waste methanol, and the farmhouse is heated by waste water from the distillery before being processed and returned to the lake it is drawn from”.
The family also own 600 acres of cider apple trees that do not go to waste. James says he wanted to explore gin distilling methods and create a drink that “worked off the definition that gin is a redistilled vodka with juniper as the predominant flavour”. The process they use is the same as that used for the potato vodka except using apples to make the mash. Using the same process but taking this concept even further the distillery has released a tongue-in-cheek single botanical gin/juniper vodka labelled with both a gin and a vodka label.
“The by-products of the distillation process are all recycled. The spent mash is used to feed William’s livestock, boilers and vehicles on the farm run on waste methanol, and the farmhouse is heated by waste water from the distillery.”
As well as their potato vodka and apple based gin the family also makes limited edition flavoured vodkas. Their marmalade, a highly commended entrant for the 2012 world marmalade championships, is used to make a marinade, which is used in the distillation process to create their marmalade vodka. The chase distillery makes use of their traceability and sustainable philosophy to create a product well suited to professional bartenders.
By creating high quality products with a genuine back-story they give bartenders an opportunity to interact with the spirits to entertain and stun customers with knowledge and outstanding drinks. Their focus on bartenders is reflected in their ‘Rock the Farm’ event which sees 700 bartenders take over the farm and compete for the Chase Cup.
By focusing on the things at the heart of spirits retailing; bartending, traceability, sustainability, and quality, Chase have quickly become one of the finest distilleries in the country and as long as they stay true to these ideals will continue to redefine spirit production in the UK.
Joe Dick is Assistant Manager at Edinburgh’s The Hanging Bat. His box room is filled with fermentation vessels, beer, gin, tiny oak barrels, and a water purification device that is used for no other purpose. He occasionally writes at http://whatjoewrote.wordpress.com/ and very frequently tweets lyrically on @whatjoewrote.
