In an 11th century building, the old convent of Llançà, rests what will be the first whiskey made entirely in Catalonia, with an intense amber color and a marked barley flavor. The creators of this brandy, which if all goes well can be tasted from 2024, are Isaac Castelló and Pilar Martínez, who four years ago left their jobs in banking and in a meat laboratory to make artisan liqueurs, under the name of Quevall “without having a clue,” says Isaac Castelló.
Two people wondered how whiskey was made and found that it had never been made entirely in Catalonia. “They buy them in bulk in Scotland, for example, and they age them here, that is, they only do the last part of the process,” he says. “At first it did not seem too difficult either because you need three ingredients: water, yeast and a cereal. Talking about whiskey is like talking about bread, it can be made with different cereals: rye, oats, wheat, barley. But what has prestige is what is done in Scotland with barley malt and this is what we are making », he explains.
Of these three ingredients the only thing that is not of Catalan origin is the yeast, “we bought it in a laboratory in Switzerland.” What this ferment does is absorb the sugars that the barley has and transform them into alcohol. They draw the water from the well that they have in the building, “we are lucky that we are in the old convent and we have the well inside.” As for barley, “it was the most complicated part because there is a lot of this cereal in Catalonia, but not all of it is used to make whiskey and beer.” They found one with the right characteristics in Almacelles, Lleida, and they bought it when the malt had already been processed.
This procedure consists of transforming starch, a type of complex sugar, into fermentable. For this, the barley is soaked for a couple of days so that it swells. Then the water is extracted and for a week it is stirred at a controlled temperature, less than twenty degrees. When the cereal begins to germinate, the molasses is released, this compound makes the barley sugars fermentable. When most grains are in this state is when it begins to dry.
«A year ago we decided buy barley from producers in Empordà and get things ready to do this process ourselves”, explains Castelló. “We spoke with the Agricultural Cooperative of Castelló d’Empúries and they have the barley of the variety that we need, for now they have a silo for me.”
Facing these two phases, so that the barley germinates, they do it vertically with a machine that they have adapted. «I saw an Argentine company that did it with a large drum. I asked for a price for that machine from an Italian firm and it cost about 300,000 euros ». In order not to make such a large investment, they investigated and found a similar disused machine in a company dedicated to the manufacture of artisan leather in Igualada. “To treat the leather, a process similar to the sprouting of barley is carried out,” he comments. First the pieces were soaked and then they were moved with an apparatus and after ten days they were dried. “That’s like what we do. And that kind of drum cost us about 800 euros. With an engineer we modified it to be able to carry out the first and second stage within this device. Once these two steps have been taken, it is time to dry it. Now we are doing it with gas burners, but it is a ruin”, declares Isaac Castelló.
Since the price of gas is very high, they were looking for a cheaper and more efficient way to do it and they found a company in Andalusia that had an alternative. “They have a patented infrared food dehydration technology. And we talked with them to find out how we could do it to adapt their method to what we wanted to do. We are now waiting for a stainless steel drum to arrive with infrared panels that will dry the barley. With this we will save energy because the power it needs is 3,000 watts”, and he continues joking: “I don’t know what day it occurred to me to make whiskey because it is a headache and a ruin, but once you have made all the investment you no longer back down.”
If this system works with their production volumes they want to open a small malt factory and sell the surplus to local breweries. “If it goes well, the intention is to make a large one to supply the brewers of Catalonia, and someone has already contacted us.”
Once this whole process of malting the barley is done, it is cooked and distilled. The space dedicated to this is a room in which there are tanks and three copper stills, these devices are used to distill and are made of copper because it is an antiseptic material and a great thermal conductor.
When they have the barley malt, they grind it with a mill and then put it in tanks to cook it three times. First, they heat the barley to 65 degrees so that the sugars dissolve, when it is ready, the juice is extracted from the barley, about 1,000 liters, and they are placed in a container with the yeast so that it transforms these sugars into alcohol “we let it ferment for a week, which is considered a long time because this is when you start to mold the type of product you want to make. I want an oily, dense whiskey that shows the cereal. That’s why I let it ferment for more days.”
After seven days, the product has between nine and ten degrees of alcohol and that is when it is distilled twice. In that process is to separate the alcohol from the water. «The first time we want to extract the percentage of alcohol that the barley juice has. Once this is done we have 400 liters with an alcohol percentage of between 35 and 36 degrees. Since this liquid still contains water, it is distilled again. In this last step, about 90 liters of alcohol with a 77% graduation remain, and this product is the one that rests in the casks for a minimum of three years.
From this distillation process, the barley grain that has been cooked and the water that has been separated from the alcohol are normally released. But in Quevall liqueurs they do not waste it, the cereal that has been cooked and the distilled barley juice, which does not have alcohol, is given to a farmer who has organic calves in Agullana to feed his animals. Despite being processed, this food has a lot of protein. “At first we would throw the juice, but now we will also keep it for you and when you have the trailer ready to come and get it.”
Scotch whiskey is put in sherry barrels. «We have whiskey aging in this type of casks, but we thought we could do it Catalan because here we have rancid wine, which would be the equivalent, and now we have three casks where the whiskey is and a mistela and for the moment it seems to be going well ». In each barrel there are 200 liters of about 64 degrees. Approximately 660 half-liter bottles come out of each barrel. Castellón remarks that: “we have learned all this through trial and error,” says Isaac Castelló.
The whiskey has now been aged for two years and has to be aged for at least three. “That means that if all goes well in 2024 I could start marketing it.”
Apart from whiskey, they also have spirits and the difference with other distilleries is that the products they use are natural. In their products there are no essences, aromas or dyes. They only use plants, fruits, roots and leaves, some from their own garden and others they collect. For this they have the thirty health permit.
They make various ratafia, herbal liqueurs, chamomile, gin, rum, etc. They started making liqueurs and little by little they expanded their range of products. «We wanted to do something different and we went to see several distilleries and they did not work directly with plants but with aromas and extracts. Doing it with plants and fruits is more laborious and complicated, but we thought there might be interest in doing it this way. And the truth is that in these four years we have grown a lot”, says Isaac. Some of the fruits and herbs they grow themselves in their patio or around Llançà, such as lemons, oranges or chamomile. The recipes they use are old and he has recovered them.
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A historic building now converted into a distillery
Entering the Quevall distillery is like visiting a piece of Llançà history. The exposed stone walls and the vaulted ceiling make it clear that it is a cozy old place full of experiences. “Every time we do works we discover things we didn’t know were there,” explains Isaac Castelló. In fact, between its walls you can see a Catalan vault made of sea stone, “none of that has ever been seen,” says Castelló, who has no objection to showing it to anyone who asks for it. And in fact, there are architects who go to see it. Under it there are many old objects, such as a barbecue utensil from 300 years ago. The tasting room is presided over by what had been the entrance door of the building, restored and converted into a table by Isaac Castelló’s father. The interior patio is also pleasant, full of rosemary, María Lluisa, laurel and many other herbs, a lemon tree and an orange tree that they use for their liqueurs. In summer they carry out visits where attendees can enjoy their products.