Grain

No grain for whisky grows in Yilan. The plain around Yuanshan produces rice and vegetables, but no barley. Kavalan imports all of its brewing barley from Scotland and other European countries, already malted and ready for milling.

Many American whiskeys blend corn or rye into the mash. Kavalan, by contrast, relies exclusively on malted barley. That makes Kavalan a single malt in the Scottish tradition, even though not a single grain of it was grown in Taiwan.

The barley is milled and mixed with soft water from the Xueshan mountains in the mash tun. This releases the starch and converts it into sugar. After several days of fermentation with yeast, a wash of about eight percent alcohol is produced. This forms the basis for distillation.

From the very beginning, Kavalan committed to single malt rather than a blend of different grains. This was a deliberate decision by Lee Tien-Tsai. Only this way could the new distillery position itself internationally on equal footing with traditional Scottish houses, even though Yilan itself is a rice-growing region with nothing to do with barley cultivation.

Kavalan decides which barley variety and roast level go into the cask as early as the order placed with the maltster in Europe. Most bottlings remain unpeated, while the Peaty Cask series is lightly to moderately peated. In this way, the distillery in Yilan determines the character of the whisky long before the grain ever reaches Taiwanese soil.