The maturation process is cut down by a third, from four to six years versus the 15 or 25 years of its Scottish counterparts. Sorry, Scotland! Taiwan's Kavalan named world's best single malt whisky". NY Daily News. 23 March 2015 . Retrieved 25 March 2015. The distillery has been recognized as one of the highest rated spirits during the World Whiskies Awards. [10]

Nestled in the lush green surroundings of northeast Taiwan is a distillery that has been making major inroads into the global whisky scene. Since it opened 15 years ago, Kavalan has become the darling of international tasting competitions, shaping the nascent Asian whisky and broader world whisky movements in the process. You Won't Believe Where the World's Best Whiskey Comes From". Time. 23 March 2015 . Retrieved 25 March 2015. The distillery was named by Whisky Magazine as the World Icons of Whisky "Whisky Visitor Attraction of the Year" for 2011, and its products have won several other awards. [3] Kavalan was also the first distillery to use Swan’s now famous STR cask treatment, which stands for shaved, toasted and re‐charred. The method was developed as a way to combat the shortage of refill casks in the global whisky industry between 2009 and 2013. Chang explains: “Refill casks play a huge role in terms of complexity, particularly oxidisation, so we needed to think of something to solve this problem.” Swan therefore came up with the idea of buying ex‐ wine casks and removing their organic acids by shaving, toasting and re‐charring the wood.In 2015, Kavalan's Vinho Barrique expression was named the world's best single malt whisky by World Whiskies Awards. [8] [9]

Rosenblatt, Susannah (14 June 2010). "In Taiwan, a Bit of Scotland Matures". The New York Times . Retrieved 24 May 2014. In January 2010, one of the distillery's products caused a stir by beating three Scotch whiskies and one English whisky in a blind tasting organised in Leith, Scotland, to celebrate Burns Night. [5] [6] The distillery is based in Yilan County, south of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. The area’s high temperatures (averaging 33 degrees Celsius in the summer) and sweltering humidity accelerate the interaction of the liquor with the wood barrels. Lee, who runs King Car with his son, Yu‐Ting Lee, gathered a team of engineers and food technologists to research how whisky is made around the world. According to Ian Chang, Kavalan’s master blender, Lee Sr was heavily inspired by the “traditional Scotch style and traditional producing methods”. Single malt was the inevitable direction for Kavalan. Lee and his team sought the ideal location in which to build the distillery, settling on County Yilan because of its plentiful water supply and subtropical climate, ideal for whisky maturation. The distillery, which had a capacity of 2.5 million litres of pure alcohol a year, with four copper pot stills, was built in just nine months. “It took just 45 days to do the installation and commissioning of all the production equipment, so we were up and running in less than one year,” says Chang.

Taste Profile

After its first few runs Kavalan bought a new set of much larger German stills to expand production. After experimenting with these stills from 2008-2010 they decided to retire them as they produced an alcohol which was too processed and didn’t allow them to work with texture and flavor. [4] June 2021). "The Distillery That Put Taiwan On The World Map – Kavalan Distillery". 88 Bamboo . Retrieved 15 May 2023. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link) Tan, Rebecca Lynne (24 June 2014). "Taiwan whisky comes out tops". The Straits Times . Retrieved 24 May 2014.