King Car Whisky Distillery
The King Car Distillery in Taiwan started distilling in 2006. It is Taiwan‘s first distillery and well-visited by about 1 mio visitors a year by now. KAVALAN - 噶瑪蘭 - is the name of indigenous people, „the people of the plan“ who lived in the region of the distillery. The distilleries are situated on a 32-hectare palm-rimmed area in Ilan, 32 kilometres southeast of the capital Taipei. There is also a well equipped distillery B (2008) with German Arnold Holstein potstills and columns with plates. These special pot stills were manufactured by Arnold Holstein of Baden Würtemberg (see www.a-holstein.de) but The Gateway to Distilleries was told that they are presently not in use for ditilling whisky but white spirits (2012). There is a Line A and a Line B. The founder of the distillery is T.T. Lee who also developed the company King Car which produces coffee, soups, mineral water etc.
Chang Ming Chih, Master Blender at the distillery, says: “Our goal is to become one of the world’s top five whisky distilleries. And we will prove to the rest of the world that Taiwan is actually an ideal location for making whisky...From the very beginning, our goal has been to build a distillery that will stand for hundreds of years for whisky lovers from around the world.“
The single malt is released under the label KAVALAN. The distillery says that the annual turnout can be 9 mio. bottles and they are running now at 60% of capacity. The annual output is 1.3 million litres in distillery A with the Scottish lantern type of pot stills and 2.6 million litres in distillery B with the Holstein Stills (2010).
KAVALN Factsheet by Charles MacLean please see
The Gateway to Distilleries presents photos by kind permission of Bernhard Schäfer (2012). The photos are copyright by Bernhard Schäfer 2012 only.
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