The Full English whisky is a new range of independently bottled English single malts from The London Distillery Company (LDC). The opening collection, The First Serving, launches on 20 November 2026 with three single casks: London Calling from Bimber (58% ABV, virgin American oak, 254 bottles, £90), Portobello Belle from Adnams (58.7% ABV, port cask, 272 bottles, £50) and Ashes to Ashes, a peated whisky from The English Distillery (54.5% ABV, moscatel barrique, 141 bottles, £70). All three are bottled at cask strength, non chill-filtered and at natural colour, and sell through londondistillery.co.uk and selected specialist retailers.
A London distillery bottling other people’s whisky, and serving it on a breakfast table with the ketchup and the brown sauce. That is the pitch behind The Full English, and it is a better idea than the gag suggests.
English whisky now has its own Geographical Indication, and the country has grown from a handful of distilleries into a genuinely varied category. LDC’s new range is built to show that spread: three single casks, three distilleries, three very different ways of making English single malt.
What is The Full English whisky?
The Full English is an independent bottling series from The London Distillery Company, the producer that became London’s first new whisky distillery in over a century when it opened in 2011. Instead of LDC’s own spirit, the range picks single casks from other English distilleries and bottles them under one label.
The name is a nod to the traditional English breakfast, and the presentation leans all the way in. Each bottle is a numbered “Table”, the launch photography sets them out in a café with a menu card, sauce bottles and salt and pepper shakers, and every release is named after a song by an English artist: The Clash, Dire Straits and David Bowie for this first round.
The labels carry a contour map of England with the source region picked out, alongside “Independently Served” in place of the usual “independently bottled”. It is playful, but the specs underneath are serious: every cask is bottled at full strength, non chill-filtered and at natural colour.
Matt McKay, managing director and whisky maker at LDC, frames the range around variety. In his words, the idea is recognising “that there isn’t one way to make English whisky”. He points to distilleries working with different grains, fermentation regimes, stills and casks, and says LDC wants to find whiskies “with something interesting to say, and give them a platform.”
The First Serving: the three bottles
| Table 01: London Calling | Table 02: Portobello Belle | Table 03: Ashes to Ashes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Distillery | Bimber (London) | Adnams (Southwold, Suffolk) | The English Distillery (Norfolk) |
| Cask | Virgin American oak, cask #832 | Port cask, cask #30 (full maturation) | Moscatel barrique, cask #12803 |
| Distilled / filled | Filled May 2020 | Distilled February 2015 | Filled October 2015 |
| Spirit | Unpeated single malt | Unpeated single malt | Peated single malt |
| ABV | 58.0% | 58.7% | 54.5% |
| Bottles | 254 | 272 | 141 |
| Size | 70cl | 70cl | 70cl |
| RRP | £90 | £50 | £70 |
| Who it suits | Fans of bright, oak-forward young malts | Collectors after mature English whisky at a sharp price | Peat drinkers who like fruit with their smoke |
Table 01: London Calling, distilled at Bimber
The first table stays in the capital. Bimber was founded in North Acton, west London, in 2015 by Dariusz Plazewski, and has built a following on single malt made from English barley, fermented slowly and distilled on direct-fired stills. Its single cask releases are usually snapped up quickly, so a Bimber cask from an outside bottler is worth paying attention to.
This one was filled into a virgin American oak cask in May 2020. New oak works fast on young spirit, and LDC’s notes describe exactly what you would expect from it: a big wave of vanilla and coconut on the nose, then tropical fruit and citrus on the palate. At 58% ABV it should have the structure to carry all that wood.
London Calling: distillery tasting notes
Nose: Toffee, split vanilla pod, desiccated coconut
Palate: Apricot, mango, lime juice
Finish: Not published by LDC
ABV: 58.0% | Cask: Virgin American oak, #832 | Bottles: 254 | Price: £90
Table 02: Portobello Belle, distilled at Adnams
Adnams is a Southwold brewery on the Suffolk coast that opened its Copper House distillery in 2010, after successfully challenging an old rule that kept brewers from distilling on the same site. That brewing background shows in how Adnams approaches whisky: it has always been happy to work with different grains and casks rather than sticking to a single house style.
Portobello Belle is the oldest whisky in the set. It was distilled in February 2015 and spent its full maturation in a port cask, cask #30, before being bottled at 58.7% ABV. LDC’s notes point to a rich, fruit-led dram: dark sugar, butterscotch, hedgerow berries and fig jam.
At £50 for a decade-plus English single cask at full strength, this is the bottle in the set that will move fastest.
Portobello Belle: distillery tasting notes
Nose and palate (combined notes): Demerara sugar, butterscotch, hedgerow berries, fig jam
Finish: Not published by LDC
ABV: 58.7% | Cask: Port cask, #30 (full maturation) | Bottles: 272 | Price: £50
Table 03: Ashes to Ashes, distilled at The English Distillery
The English Distillery in Norfolk, formerly known as The English Whisky Company and long home to St George’s Distillery, was where the modern English whisky revival found its footing in 2006. Founded by the Nelstrop family, it has spent two decades making both unpeated and peated single malt.
Ashes to Ashes is the peated one here, and the smallest outturn at just 141 bottles. The spirit went into a moscatel barrique, cask #12803, in October 2015. Moscatel is a sweet, aromatic fortified wine cask, and pairing it with peat is a deliberate push and pull: LDC describes smoked redcurrants and ripe peach running alongside wood smoke.
Ashes to Ashes: distillery tasting notes
Nose and palate (combined notes): Smoked redcurrants, ripe peach, wood smoke Finish: Not published by LDC
ABV:54.5% | Cask: Moscatel barrique, #12803 | Bottles: 141 | Price: £70
Who is The London Distillery Company?
The London Distillery Company opened in 2011 as the first new whisky distillery in London since the Lea Valley Distillery in Stratford closed in 1903. It began in a former dairy in Battersea and later moved to a railway arch in Bermondsey, and its early casks went through several owners before Gleann Mòr Spirits acquired the company in full in 2023.
Since then LDC has rebuilt its range around its own matured stock: Ten Times Around the Sun, a 10-year-old London single malt; Yesteryear, a 6-year-old London single rye; Embarque, a single malt finished in oloroso casks; and the cask strength New Forms series.
Matt McKay joined as managing director in January 2025. He previously worked at Dunphail Distillery in Scotland and was director of communications at Bimber, and while at Bimber he sat on the board of the English Whisky Guild and helped write the GI proposal for English whisky. That background explains a lot about The Full English: this is a range built by someone who has spent years arguing for English whisky as a category.
Why The Full English whisky matters for English whisky
Independent bottlers have done enormous work for Scotch over the decades, putting single casks from well-known and lesser-known distilleries side by side and letting drinkers compare. English whisky has been short on that kind of platform, partly because the category is young and partly because most distilleries still bottle almost everything themselves.
The First Serving is a neat snapshot of what the category already offers. One cask shows a young London malt in fresh oak. One shows a decade-old Suffolk malt in a port cask. One shows peated Norfolk spirit in a sweet wine barrique. Three distilleries, three regions of England, three very different whiskies, and all of them at full strength.
Price and availability
The Full English: The First Serving launches on Friday 20 November 2026. All three bottles are 70cl and are sold through the LDC webshop at londondistillery.co.uk and through selected specialist retailers.
The official UK prices are £90 for London Calling, £50 for Portobello Belle and £70 for Ashes to Ashes. As a rough guide for readers outside the UK, that puts the set at roughly $67 to $121 at current exchange rates, before local taxes and shipping.
With outturns of 254, 272 and 141 bottles, none of these will stay on the shelf for long. International buyers should check whether LDC or its specialist retail partners ship to their country before launch day, as distribution details outside the UK have not yet been confirmed.
Our take
We have not tasted these yet, so no verdict on the liquid. On paper, though, The First Serving is a strong opening: three distilleries with distinct personalities, sensible outturns, full-strength bottling and prices that sit below what many English single casks command today.
If you only buy one, the choice is about style. Portobello Belle is the value pick and the most mature whisky in the set. Ashes to Ashes is the rarest and the most unusual pairing of the three. London Calling is the one to buy if you already follow Bimber and want to see a cask chosen by someone else’s hands.
The bigger question is what LDC serves next. A Table 04 from a distillery further north or west would make this a series worth collecting in full.
Frequently asked questions
What is The Full English whisky? The Full English is a range of independently bottled English single malt whiskies from The London Distillery Company. Each release is a single cask from a different English distillery, bottled at cask strength without chill filtration or added colour. The first collection, The First Serving, features Bimber, Adnams and The English Distillery and launches on 20 November 2026.
Which whiskies are in The Full English: The First Serving? The First Serving has three bottles. Table 01, London Calling, is a Bimber single malt from virgin American oak at 58% ABV. Table 02, Portobello Belle, is an Adnams single malt from a port cask at 58.7% ABV. Table 03, Ashes to Ashes, is a peated single malt from The English Distillery, matured in a moscatel barrique at 54.5% ABV.
How much does The Full English whisky cost? The official UK prices are £90 for London Calling (Bimber), £50 for Portobello Belle (Adnams) and £70 for Ashes to Ashes (The English Distillery). All three are 70cl bottles at cask strength. Prices outside the UK will depend on local taxes, retailer margins and shipping costs, so check with your nearest specialist retailer.
Where can I buy The Full English whisky? The Full English: The First Serving is sold through The London Distillery Company’s webshop at londondistillery.co.uk and selected specialist whisky retailers from 20 November 2026. With only 141 to 272 bottles per cask, stock is limited. International buyers should check shipping options directly with the distillery or retailers before launch.
How many bottles of The Full English are there? Each bottling is a single cask, so outturns are small. London Calling from Bimber has 254 bottles, Portobello Belle from Adnams has 272 bottles, and Ashes to Ashes from The English Distillery has just 141 bottles. That makes 667 bottles across the whole First Serving collection, with the peated Ashes to Ashes the scarcest of the three.
Why is it called The Full English? The name refers to the traditional English breakfast, a theme that runs through the whole presentation. Each bottle is numbered as a “Table”, the labels say “Independently Served”, and the launch imagery shows the bottles on a café table with a menu. Every release is also named after a song by an English artist.
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