At some point, every distillery stops asking what have we made? and starts asking a better question: what could it become?
For London Distillery Company, New Forms is born from exactly that question.
This is not a release about invention from scratch. It’s about evolution – about taking an already distinctive London spirit and asking how far it can be stretched, shaped, and reinterpreted without losing its identity.
The foundation of New Forms is the original LDC single malt spirit – bright, expressive, and unmistakably barley-led, distilled during the company’s first chapter.
Even in its earliest form, it carries a natural energy. Before wood ever comes into play, there is lift and clarity – fruit brightness, grain definition, and a structural precision that makes it particularly responsive to maturation.
That responsiveness is what unlocks the idea behind this series. Because whisky does not behave uniformly in cask. Some spirits dominate; others are quickly subdued. The LDC spirit occupies a more interesting space: it engages with the wood rather than surrendering to it. It evolves in shape, while retaining its core identity.
That quality is what makes New Forms possible – and what defines it.
Finishing whisky is often treated as a final flourish – a short-term influence layered over a fully formed spirit, or in some cases an attempt to mask what was considered not yet ready. New Forms takes a different view.
Here, the cask is neither decoration nor disguise. It is interpretation. Each whisky begins from the same base spirit but is guided into a distinct direction through specifically chosen first-fill finishing casks – selected not only for their quality, but for the way they interact with and reshape our spirit.
Importantly, none of these finishing styles were used by the original London Distillery Company. That choice was intentional. New Forms is not about revisiting familiar ground – it is about exploring what was previously untried and discovering what our whisky can become when placed in new contexts.
While the base single malt for all three New Forms releases was originally matured in refill hogsheads, the final outcomes could not be more different.
This expression is the most transparent dialogue between spirit and wood. Rather than masking character, the ex-bourbon influence amplifies it – allowing the natural fruit and barley structure of the whisky to come forward with clarity. The result is energetic and direct, with the oak providing shape rather than weight. It is perhaps the most “classic” reinterpretation of LDC spirit – but only in the sense that it reinforces what the spirit looks like when nothing is obscured.
The fino sherry cask introduces a different kind of tension. Its influence is more architectural – saline, nutty, and delicately oxidative. Rather than diminishing the fruit, it reframes it, lending the spirit a more chiselled structure and precision while allowing bright stone fruit notes to resonate. It shows how the LDC spirit responds when asked to become more angular and more deliberate.
The fino sherry cask introduces a different kind of tension. Its influence is more architectural – saline, nutty, and delicately oxidative. Rather than diminishing the fruit, it reframes it, lending the spirit a more chiselled structure and precision while allowing bright stone fruit notes to resonate. It shows how the LDC spirit responds when asked to become more angular and more deliberate.
Since the revival of London Distillery Company, there has been a renewed focus on looking at the existing cask stocks not as remnants of a past chapter, but as a creative foundation.
New Forms represents a shift in perspective.
Instead of asking how to replicate what has been done before, the question becomes: how many directions can our single malt take while remaining recognisably itself?
It is a way of working that prioritises exploration over repetition, and curiosity over certainty.
In many ways, it marks a more confident phase of the distillery’s modern identity – one where the original spirit is no longer just something to preserve, but something to actively engage with.
One origin. Multiple interpretations.
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