If you ever had a shudder of a thought that whisky might be getting alittle boring - well, Hanoi's Song Cai has something to say about that.

The distillery that is perhaps thus far best known for being amongst the first to produce a made-in-Vietnam gin, was founded in 2018 by Daniel Nguyen, and has featured in its spirits the use of native botanicals that aims to tell the story of Vietnam - even its name "Song Cai" translates to "Mother River"!

And now it seems Song Cai is making its foray into single malt whiskies with the Be Single Malt Whisky - but this is anything but your standard dram.

Made from a mash bill of 53.4% malted corn and 46.6% nixtamalized corn that is inoculated with traditional Vietnamese banh-men (similar to koji)). The mash bill is fermented one month in liquid state and six months in solid-state for the residual grains. It is then distilled twice in a grain-on, direct-fired copper pot still and once in a solid-state, wood alquitar still.

The whisky is matured in a solera system, half in ex-bourbon American Oak seasoned with yellow rice wine and half with sweet purple rice wine.

The Song Cai Be Single Malt Whisky is bottled at 51.4% ABV. 

Now where do we even begin to wrap our heads around this!

At first glance, it would seem to qualify more as a single grain whisky as opposed to single malt considering the use of corn and nixtamalised corn, instead of malted barley.

It also appears that Song Cai is taking a route rather similar to several rice-based whiskies that have rather ingeniously applied the use of koji to enable starches to become fermentable sugars that can therefore be fermented. The use of nixtamalised corn is also reminiscent of Mexican whiskies that have favoured the base ingredient as well, which in our experience has yielded a very intriguing tortilla flavour.

Regardless, we'll be keeping a keen eye on this!

Kanpai!

88 Bamboo Editorial Team