Featured Distillery, William Chase
WILL’S STORY
“I grew up on our family farm Tyrrells in Herefordshire. Wanting to be a farmer from a young age, to grow fresh produce enhanced with the magic earthy smell of planting potatoes into fresh soil in spring was to be my dream career.”
Having struggled to make ends meet for many years in my twenties, trying to build a business doing what I loved; farming, I eventually found it best to focus on one thing. I chose potatoes, for good or for bad, trading them to supermarkets to make a living but little more. Life was difficult as a trader. The phone was ringing all day but with constant problems, mainly as a result of the supermarkets pressure to reduce price.
I was one day struck with the eureka idea of turning our home-grown potatoes into crisps, aided by the original team on the farm (and some common sense) we established a brand onto the market and Tyrrells was born. As the brand quickly grew (along with my waistline!), I started to look for the next challenge.
Previously on a Tyrrells export trip I discovered a distillery making vodka purely from potatoes and I couldn’t believe how good it tasted. I learnt that gin is made from vodka (well, a crude vodka called neutral grain spirit), so I thought that if we could make our gin, not from NGS, but from our homegrown vodka, we would become the first real single-estate gin.
Our aim is to keep innovating with both the spirits and the wines, experimenting with ways to make new and unique flavours, we’re even trying to ferment beetroot into vodka!
Suggested Serves:
Kiss Chase: 2 parts Chase Vodka, 1 part Chase Elderflower Liqueur, 1⁄4 part freshly squeezed lemon, top up with pressed apple juice. Shake all ingredients with ice and fine strain into a coupette glass. Garnish with a slice of apple.
Rhuberry Fool; combine 1 part Chase Rhubarb Vodka with 1 part pressed apple juice in a chilled champagne flute. Muddle raspberries and fine strain before topping with English sparkling wine. Garnish with finely sliced fresh rhubarb and a raspberry.
Perfect as a Martini, 1 part dry vermouth, 2 parts Naked Chase Vodka. Shake all ingredients and strain into a chilled martini glass, serve with a slice of apple.
Also delicious as an Orange Blossom Fizz cocktail: 20ml Seville Orange Gin, 5ml rose water, 10ml honey shaken and topped with fizz.
Sweet Martini: 30ml Chase GB Gin, 30ml Sweet Vermouth, garnish with thinly sliced apple.
Chase Marmalade Mule; 1 part Chase Marmalade Vodka, 3 parts Ginger Beer, dash of Angostura Bitters, fresh lime. Build over lots of ice, add a dash of bitters and garnish with a squeeze of lime.
http://www.distillersdirect.com/brands/chase
