Omar Whisky brand ambassador Yu Cheng-yen speaks at roughly 150 tastings per year.
The Nantou Distillery of the Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation (TTL) has enjoyed quite a resurgence since the Jiji earthquake reconstruction effort. You might well describe it as having arisen from the ashes, with its Omar Whisky label the emergent phoenix.
The warm sunlight of Central Taiwan sparkles inside the two-story-tall barrel-shaped tasting room, where the sight of an angel representing the “angel’s share” sitting atop a giant bottle brings a smile to visiting whisky fans. Distillery guests can not only taste its unique lychee- and orange-flavored whiskies, but also sample whisky drawn straight from the cask.
Participants in a distillery event learn a great deal about whisky.
Advantageous local conditions
The Nantou Distillery was badly damaged by 1999’s Jiji Earthquake and lost six of its warehouses to fire. These had stored alcohol and blazed so intensely that the fire department had no chance to extinguish the flames, which burned for three days and three nights. Included in the NT$4 billion in losses were brandies that had been cellared at the distillery for 20 to 30 years.
Established to support Taiwanese agriculture, the Nantou Distillery made wines and brandies from excess domestic fruit production.
When the Nantou Distillery launched its own whisky brand in 2008, it chose to name it Omar, from the Scottish Gaelic word for “amber.” Drawing on its 40-plus years of expertise in making fruit liquors, the company introduced the world’s first lychee-liqueur-barrel-finished single-malt whisky in 2015, selling out the first batch on the day of its release.
Omar Whisky brand ambassador Yu Cheng-yen says that this fruity, distinctively Taiwanese whisky uses lychees from Fenyuan Township, Changhua County. These are macerated and fermented to make a 12% ABV lychee liqueur, the ABV of which is further raised by the addition of brandy. The resultant liqueur is matured in oak casks, which the company retains. The distillery creates its lychee whisky by first aging the whisky in a bourbon cask for four years, and then transferring it to a lychee-liqueur-seasoned cask to age for another one to two years. The process adds a fresh lychee flavor to the whisky’s finish.
The distillery also makes cask-strength whiskies finished in plum-, orange- and black-queen-grape-liquor-seasoned casks using plums from Xinyi Township, oranges from Zhongliao Township, and grapes from Erlin Township in Changhua County. Omar has also made the world’s first osmanthus-liqueur-barrel-finished whisky. These whiskies have a distinctly Taiwanese character that has made them popular with both Taiwanese and Japanese whisky aficionados.
Omar has even made a whisky finished in a craft-beer IPA cask developed by the TTL Wurih Brewery. The resultant product has the hoppy nose of a beer, but the palate and finish of a whisky, and brims with Taiwanese flavor.
This wall of Solera-system PX sherry casks is worth NT$200 million, yet is held together by nothing more than wooden supports. Nobody has dared to make any changes since the cask supplier personally ensured that the supports were placed just as they had been in Spain.
Rare and collectible
International competitions are a great way for new brands to build a reputation. The Nantou Distillery created in internal team of ten people specifically aimed at winning awards. The team researches each competition’s awards history to identify which products won awards and what the individual judges’ preferences are. It then selects 600 of the 3,000 casks of whisky the distillery produces annually and begins assessing them, eventually winnowing them down to the three that the company will submit to competitions.
Omar has entered its single malt whiskies in many international tasting competitions since 2014, including the International Spirits Challenge, San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Malt Maniacs Awards, International Wine & Spirit Competition, World Whisky Awards and Concours Mondial de Bruxelles. The distillery has distinguished itself by accumulating more than 200 medals to date.
If you happen to visit the Nantou Distillery, be sure to check out the “oak cask wall” while you are there. Believe it or not, the “wall,” which is where the distillery stores the whiskies aged in its Solera system PX sherry casks, is worth more than NT$200 million!
Global competition for sherry casks is intense, but in 2015 TTL managed to outmaneuver Scottish distillers to acquire an entire set of sherry casks from Ximénez-Spínola, a winery in Spain’s famous Jerez wine region with a nearly 300-year history. Rumor has it that TTL was able to arrange the deal because the winery’s owner has a Taiwanese daughter-in-law. “Having connections makes things easier.”
This set of rare sherry casks is filled with whisky made in 2008, the year the Nantou Distillery initiated whisky production. The distillery began selling this special whisky in 2018, bottling it in crystal bottles at a rate of just four casks per year. Initially, each cask produced 250 bottles of whisky that sold for NT$10,000 each, but the angel’s share means that the amount of whisky in the remaining casks declines every year. By 2023, the angel’s share had reduced the volume to just 200 bottles per cask. In that year, the distillery chose to enhance the whisky’s collectability and investability by decorating each of the bottles with one of four of painter Ma Pai-sui works: The Beauty of Taroko, Kenting, Southern Coastline or Meinong Village Home. Sold out before they were even released, a set of four bottles is expected to be priced at more than NT$80,000.
Convinced of the positive outlook for the global whisky market, TTL is investing NT$1.3 billion in building two whisky chateaus with spires at the Nantou Distillery that it expects to finish in 2025. Once complete, these chateaus will house a whisky production facility and small museum, store 30,000 oak casks, and show visiting fans of Taiwanese whisky just how those whiskies are made.
The angel seated on the oversized whisky bottle at the entrance to the Nantou Distillery represents the “angel’s share.”
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The Angel’s Share
The “angel’s share” refers to alcohol and water lost to evaporation while a whisky ages in an oak barrel. Before this evaporative process was understood, people believed that this portion had been consumed by angels, hence the expression.
In Scotland, each barrel loses 1.5% to 3% of its volume per year. In Taiwan’s warmer climate, the angel’s share is three times larger. Taiwan’s angels must be heavy drinkers!
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For more pictures, please click 《Whisky, Taiwan Style: Omar》
