OMAR Single Malt Whisky│ Nantou Distillery

Overlook the production
process of Whisky

It’s quite warm in the summer, and it’s not cold in winter in Taiwan. Therefore, the speed of maturation in Taiwan is higher than in Scotland. The angel share is around 6-7 % per year. But we keep the guideline for Scottish whisky, the whisky matured in cask at least 3 years. Recently, Taiwan became the sixth whisky production area, the Taiwan whisky is getting popular for the unique terroir.

Malt, Water and Cask are three key elements to make good whisky.
The yeast transforms the raw materials into good spirits. Fill the spirits into the cask and wait for the magic of time. Craft man struggle to create whisky with beautiful colors, multiple flavor and taste. It represents the importance of details and experience of making whisky.

Maturation

The first step of malting is germination, which is to deep barley in water for 2-3 days. During this process, the enzyme of barley is activated, some part of barley starch transfer into sugar by enzyme activities, called modification. This process increases the congeners, flavor and color to malt. Then, the malted barley is dried by dry air from burning coal or peat in order to cease the germination and fit the requirement of shipping and storing. Note: 100% of the selected two-row barley was from England.

mashing

Malts are milled before mixing with moderate temperature water which activates the enzymes to degrade starch to sugar, ex: glucose, maltose, maltotriose. Those small molecular carbohydrates are the feeds of yeast during alcohol production. The whole process takes about 6 hours. We get sweetened liquid, called wort. Note: The Mash Tun of Nantou is from Germany.

fermentation

Cool down the wort to moderate temperature and pitch whisky yeast in the beginning of fermentation. The sugars of wort are converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and flavor compounds. As the fermentation is ceased, the wort is not sweet anymore. It contains around 7 to 8 percent of alcohol, called wash.

Distillation

Pump the wash into copper still. The alcohol strength of wash is concentrated to 65~70%abv after double distillation. We only collect the pure and pleasant part of distillates, which is called heart or new make spirit. Note: There are four pot stills in Nantou, While most Scotches are matured at 66% ABV, the new-make OMAR is diluted to a lower ABV before it’s barreled.

Maturation

The new make spirit is diluted by deionized water before filling into cask. The clear and transparent new make spirit get the extracts from the oak cask, then change its color to amber and gain flavor. The oak barrels Nantou distillery used are prepared and repair by a group of experienced coopers. An organized testing panel selects and monitors the cask during maturation. Note: As Nantou is a winery, we make different kinds of local fruit wines, that why we could have our liqueur finished whiskies including lychee barrel, plum barrel and so on.

bottling

As the whisky nearly matured, the outstanding casks are selected to packaging. Whiskies are filtered and bottled as cask strength product, or blended and diluted with other whiskies to a flavor balancing and consistent products, such as OMAR single malt whisky. Note: OMAR single malt whiskies are non-chill filtration to keep the complexity flavor and taste of the original liquor.

NAVAGATION OF NANTOU WINERY (DISTILLERY)

Welcome to reserve a distillery tour on weekend to dig out more tradition and story of the historical winery, access to acknowledge and culture of Nantou winery.