Our Whisky making process
Our Premises
Our distillery premises are completely atypical, in short, because of how small they are. We have had to be creative in our approach to production to allow us to work effectively in such a small space! Our production area is less than 30m2, and we mash, ferment, distill and barrel all within this area!
Ingredients
We use Portuguese-origin ingredients. Our cereals come from the areas surrounding Porto. They are milled into flour at a water mill in Bougado, near Trofa, and our malted barley is from one of the few Portuguese maltings which is located near Setubal.
Column still
This custom-designed dual-column still allows us to be efficient with our resources - both energy and time. Our wash can be stripped to low wines in a single pass, or run through the seconds column with the output of the first to produce barrel-proof spirits directly from an input of wash. Without this still, it would be difficult to produce a viable quantity of whisky in our tiny premises!
Portuguese Alambique
Our copper alambique is relatively small at around 200 litres capacity. The head of the still is pressure fitted, and sealed the ‘old-fashioned’ way, with a flour and water paste.
Barrels and Aging
We are lucky to be based about 20km away from our cooperage, based in Espinho.
We have a good relationship with them and they are able to provide us with a range of barrels both for aging and finishing. We currently have whisky aging in new oak, and STR barrels. We are also exploring the use of ex-wine and ex-fortified wine casks, which are abundant in our region!