The Distillery
The distillery is located in the heart of Llançà, in an unassuming building with a surprisingly interesting history. Once a dependency of the 11th century Sant Pere de Rodes monastery (located up in the nearby Serra de Rodes mountains), this house is hundreds of years old. The name 'Quevall' comes from 'stone valley' ( quer vall ), referring to the road up toward the monastery.
Sold off in the 16th century, the building in Llançà had several lives before it was bought by Isaac in 2018. He'd been working at a bank, while his wife Pilar was a biologist: both quit their jobs to start Quevall Licors!
Their initial inspiration was ratafia , the popular (and often homemade) liqueur endemic to Catalonia. Green walnuts and herbs are a key starting point for flavoring ratafia here in Llançà, and they go up to collect them in June in the mountains. Some of the botanicals for Quevall gins and liqueurs come from their own garden, where I saw this little cat!
Ratafia aside, Quevall makes a whole range of 'licors' (hence the name), including quince, patxara (made with anise, blueberries, and cranberries), chamomile, lemon, oranges, gin, and pastis. You might think that last one is more French, but after all, this is only 9km from the French border. They sell 40,000 bottles of these liqueurs per year, all of which finances their significant (in relative terms) investment in whisky.
Isaac and Pilar only have three employees, so Quevall is a small operation. When I arrive, one of them is decanting a steeped container of chamomile. Quevall has some of the most hands-on owners I've ever seen at a distillery. Say what you like - Isaac certainly gets his hands dirty!
100% Catalan Whisky
'Our objective', Isaac says, 'is 100% Catalan whisky.' His journey to making the first ever Catalan single malt whiskey has required a lot of creativity and invention. For a start, Isaac sourced local Catalan barley from <30km away - a barley strain called 'Shakira', he notes with a smile.
This grain isn't expensive, but malting is an issue in the Alt Empordà . It would cost Isaac about 30 times more to get his Catalan barley malted elsewhere. While many distillers would shrug their shoulders and import some other grain from Scotland, Germany, Belgium etc., Isaac decided to just malt his own barley!
This is where Isaac's talent as a welder came in. He made this drum, with a gas flame underneath to allow for drying. Isaac described his malting process in detail…
The barley grain soaks for 36 hours before going into the drum. Depending on the season, it then takes between 3 and 4.5 days to germinate. Fresh, cool air is pumped through the malt if it gets too hot - if it gets to about 22C or more, then it starts to auto-ferment. To dry the malt and kill the grain, its internal humidity needs to decrease from 45% to about 5%. Gas burners under the perforated drum dry it slowly over 36 hours.
This malting drum costs a few thousand euros to make/convert, and certainly seems a bit makeshift compared to sleek, industrial distilling facilities. I couldn't help but compare this to the 3 enormous malting drums I saw at Distillerie Farthofer earlier this year!
However, Isaac's hard hands-on work makes a lot of sense when you consider the costs involved. Even buying a 200kg malting machine from Italy (something very small by industry standards) would have set Isaac back somewhere between €150-300,000!
Overall, Isaac spends seven to eight days producing about 400kg of malt. The little mill he then uses to grind this into grist is *tiny*! Having held on for four years, this little thing is thankfully being replaced.
I also got to see an old wooden drum, which Isaac informed me was 200 years old! He got it near Barcelona, and tried to use it as his malting drum! Once used for washing leather, it worked quite well for aerating and turning the barley, but you couldn't dry the grain in it properly.
The Details
- Production started in 2018
- Distilling yeast from Switzerland
- 3 sparges - 64, 80, and 95C
- Two wash stills (600L) and one spirit still (300L)
- Direct gas-fired stills
- Double distillation over 14 hours
- Serpentine condensers
- 1000L wash -> 300L low wines -> 80L new make at 72% ABV
- 63% ABV going into barrel
On the day of my visit, the mash tun and washback at Quevall were out of commission - new 1500L tanks were arriving the following day. These 1500L propane-heated tanks will be larger and much more efficient than the current setup, capable of getting water up to temperature within 20 minutes.
The yeast Isaac uses is also interesting. While he tried to cultivate it continuously after his initial purchase, the yeast changed over time in the local environment, so it had to be replaced. It started producing less alcohol and more acetic acid, and Isaac knew something was wrong when the wash smells acidic! It seems like an indigenous Catalan whiskey yeast will have to wait…
Quevall's water source has its own story too. The main distillery building has its own water source: an old well. The second one of those we've talked about recently...
The local area once had a lot of active metal and gold mines, and this has affected the water's mineral content. While mountain water from the Pyrenees has low iron, the local water has a very high iron content. Good news for anemic residents, but not so much for whiskey making. Isaac said he has ways of combating this, but I must confess that these didn't survive translation into my notes very well, sorry!
However, I did catch the story about these three stills! They were made in Galicia, and designed to Isaac's specifications especially for whisky-making. I love the tiles being reused to decorate the base of the stills, not only for decoration but to hold in more heat.
Like the rest of Quevall's whiskey making process, the distillation has no computerization or automation. Isaac has to get up at 5am to put the stills on, as it takes six hours of heating before any vapors even emerge from the still. Distillation is only fully complete in the evening. You can see the serpentine condensers he uses very clearly here.
Something I hadn't considered was how Isaac's barley and malting affects this part of the whiskey making process. His local barley doesn't convert starch to alcohol as efficiently as you might see in a Scottish distillery, and while that's desirable here, it means you have a lower ratio of alcohol to water in the wash being distilled. That means it takes more energy to heat up, contributing to Isaac's long and slow distillation!
I love the bold boiling ball and pyramidal neck on these stills. When I asked Isaac if he had considered a hybrid still (because these are so common for small whiskey distilleries today), he only replied that he hates columns. You can't fault his commitment to a hands-on, direct approach to whiskey making!
Maturation
Quevall has 24 barrels in total aging at the moment, and they are producing about one barrel per month. The new equipment will improve consistency across the production processes and allow for more malting, but they won't increase the overall rate of production.
There are eight rum barrels here, and you can see how small a distillery this is: you can easily count all the casks! This is Quevall's own rum too, which is also unique for being made with cane sugar from southern Spain (and flavored with honey from the same area) instead of molasses.
Isaac uses a few different types of wood for aging, including American oak. In fact, he has even sourced some Catalan oak barrels, and as far as I can tell, he is the first person to age whiskey in one! The oaks come from Montserrat (or possibly Montseny , I might have misheard there, sorry Isaac!).
We're in the bowels of the old building now, and I would have thought the temperature in this kind of thick-walled cellar would stay consistent. Not so, Isaac tells me. The temperature goes up and down a lot here, and then there's the Tramuntana . As cold, dry Pyrenean mountain air from the north sweeps down to the coast, this powerful wind blows for roughly 100 days per year. It brings the local temperature and humidity right down.
When I visited in late September, it was about 20C and 80% humidity. If the wind sweeps in, the temperature and humidity can drop by 17C / 65% (respectively) within twelve hours. Unsurprisingly for the Mediterranean coast, the winter low is a relatively high 11C. Add all that up, and Isaac estimates he gets an angels' share of 8-9%.
Some of Quevall's casks age in a space Isaac calls the ' whiskey cave '. During mid-COVID renovations in 2020, this space was found behind a false wall. I can say for sure that it smells like a cave!
With cobwebs on my neck, I see an American oak barrel and another which Isaac has to explain to me. It's mistela , a sweet wine made by adding brandy to unfermented grape juice. This is not a common or modern style of wine like you might see in other parts of Catalonia or France. It ends up at 16-22% ABV, but without any of the grapes' sugar actually having fermented!
A Quick Aside: Vi Ranci
I also spied a tiny cask which Isaac informed me comes from his granddad. This is a family Vi Ranci cask. You can see a larger cask of vi ranci produced the old-fashioned way (at the nearby La Vinyeta vineyard) on top of this pyramid.
This regional specialty is absolutely unique, a fortified wine with some oxidative aging, a bit like oloroso sherry. The big difference, Isaac lets me know, is that ranci wine casks are left open in the sun for a day or two to give them their distinctive flavor.
With sherry, you're making a wine and then adding alcohol (distilled from the leftover, fermented grape marc) to fortify it. It then ages in a series of barrels (a solera), with oloroso sherries oxidising in the barrel as layers of yeast ( flor ) are broken up by hand.
Vi ranci is a sweet, rich wine made in a very different way: technically, it isn't 'fortified' at all. Historically, the freshly pressed grape juice was heated in big vats to evaporate much of the water. Concentrating the liquid this way, you get a much higher percentage of sugar content, so you can then ferment up to 16% ABV. The yeast then dies, but you still have plenty of sugar left over, hence a sweet wine. “This is a way to do PX [sherry], but the Catalan way,” Isaac tells me.
I was lucky enough to get a sample from Isaac's tiny ranci cask! He brought it down from the cask strength of 64% ABV to 42%. Just over three years old, this dram had a fantastic vin santo vibe. Not too sweet, a hint of saltiness, and a mustiness surely born from that oxidation in the sun. The only thing is that it has a slight gin-like bitterness at the end, but a little more aging could see this change…
The final note on Isaac's fascinating selection of casks is his future plans. He wants to use corn (75%) alongside malt (25%) to make a bourbon style whisky, for which Isaac recently charred some casks himself. Not only did they re-char old wine casks to give them a stronger, bourbon-esque character, but the Quevall employees had a barbecue over the flames!
TASTING
After all that, we need to see what this Catalan whiskey is actually like! Heading to the Quevall tasting room, we get a bottle of Batch 1 . The bottle's reverse label pays tribute to Isaac's father, Joan, who had cancer for a long time. When Quevall started up in 2018, he could only drink a very small amount of alcohol, so he would limit himself to a very good whiskey.
After his father's death, Isaac wanted to make a Catalan whiskey as a tribute to him. Joan was a fisherman who spent time in Germany, where locals unfamiliar with his Catalan name called him Capitá Hans. Local painter Paula Barros Déu first depicted the view from Llançà toward Cap de Creus as it would have appeared 500 years ago. She then added the relatively modern lighthouse (below) and the two characters, the mermaid and the farmer.
The subject of a local legend, mermaids (or sirens) sang to call farmers down from the mountains, who would then found towns on the coast like Llançà. The farmer's red hat is a traditional Catalan barretina which Quevall accentuates with the whisky's own red cap. Isaac proudly notes this is made using beeswax sourced only 5km away.
This Batch 1 is 42% ABV, natural color, and not chill filtered. Aged in American oak, it has a slight musty smell and a light body to it. The finish is good - heavy, long, but not rough. Despite being well-diluted, this single malt has a good depth to it. You can really taste the grain on the finish. When I come back to it, the first sip has an almost gin-esque herbal note, and that graininess stays strong. While it's young, there's definitely potential for this Catalan single malt to go further with time.
The Batch 1 bottles were sold for €200 each! That might sound like a lot, especially for a brand new, barely-over-three-years-old whisky - and to be frank, it is! But these 367 bottles sold out within three hours of release, so clearly people were happy to pay that much. The second batch will be coming out in December 2024, also a single cask expression.
While I wouldn't blame anyone for not paying so much for a young whisky, it's worth noting that there's no shortcuts taken at Quevall Licors. Look at the process - Isaac does everything himself. You have a whole day for distillation, when he's up at 5am, filling and moving casks, sourcing and malting the barley and wood from Catalonia… if nothing else, you can see exactly where that money goes, much better than some larger distilleries!
After the distillery visit, I was extremely lucky - I got to see the Empordà coastline from Isaac and Pilar's boat, along with local highlights like Cadaques and the Cap de Creus lighthouse featured on their bottle label. I must say, Isaac did a great job showing me around in English (with the occasional French word sprinkled in), despite having told me that he doesn't speak it well. Him and Pilar were both very accommodating and generous - thank you!
Quevall sells their products around Catalonia (or at least, as far down as Barcelona) and are starting to expand into France. It's a new distillery, and Isaac started from the position of a beginner, not someone inside the whiskey industry with experience and connections. Despite that, he has gone full steam ahead in his pursuit of '100% Catalan whisky' - how can you not love that?
Above: Cadaqués at sunset
Add comment
Comments