In good spirits: Meet Malaysia’s first independent whisky bottler with a cult following
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In good spirits: Come across Malaysia's first independent whisky bottler with a cult post-obit
One may non look a spirit bottler to be Malaysian and/or a lady, but Eiling Lim defies stereotypes with an impressive track record of highly sought-after bottlings of whisky, gin, rum and vermouth.
Ipoh-born Eiling Lim has bottled more 20 unlike whiskies so far, and has besides ventured into the world of gin, rum and vermouth. (Photo: Eiling Lim)
15 February 2022 06:30AM (Updated: ten Jul 2022 03:40PM)
Whisky was not Eiling Lim's first love, but this spirit has charted not but her career simply besides how she met her married man. Lim has the particular distinction of being Malaysia'south first contained whisky bottler in 2022 and since then, she has become a well-regarded player amidst distributors, bartenders, bar owners also as spirits enthusiasts.
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Born in 1984 and raised in Ipoh, Lim moved to Kuala Lumpur to study Business Administration. She went on to handle sales and marketing for a company producing gourmet chocolates for the duty-costless market place, and so for Mars Foods in Travel Retail. There, she had to visit Duty Free outlets in airports across Southeast Asia on a regular basis.
During this time, she started to nourish whisky tastings wherever she travelled to and fell in beloved with single malts – with the help of generous friends who shared their precious drams. Eager to explore different whiskies, she reckons that the many tastings involved in her job primed her for this.
"I remember having to attempt about 20 dissimilar chocolates every calendar week and writing tasting notes for them so that the chef could make changes to the creations," she reminisced.
"When I got into whisky, I attended whisky masterclasses and learned from online manufactures, but I felt that the nigh important learning experience came from tastings. The more than y'all sense of taste, the more than yous learn."
Equally fate would take it, Lim met her now-hubby, Luc Timmermans, at a whisky tasting at The Auld Alliance in Singapore. In 2014, Lim moved to Belgium, her husband'southward home land, and the couple happened to sense of taste a 1990 Littlemill 23 Year Old in Antwerp.
They were so impressed, they decided to buy the rest of the cask, which yielded 68 bottles. Since they couldn't finish all the bottles themselves, Timmermans encouraged Lim to start her own independent whisky bottling brand as she always dreamt of bringing more unmarried malt varieties to Malaysia.
This starting time eponymous release sold out in two weeks, which Lim credits to Timmermans' reputation – he's a retired whisky bottler – in the whisky world. Since that auspicious start, Lim has done 23 different whisky releases: An official bottling with Glenfarclas for a 1979 cask, likewise as joint bottlings with La Casa Del Habano in Belgium, Wholly Spirits (her distributor in Malaysia), and Shinanoya in Japan.
"I have very strict requirements in selecting casks to be bottled. Together with my husband, we endeavor 20 to 30 unlike casks on average every time we cull a whisky to bottle." – Eiling Lim
She has also sold some whiskies for private bottlings, where customers can take their own labels printed on the bottle.
"I take no fixed schedule in releasing my whisky bottlings because I believe in choosing quality casks which are affordable. If I don't notice anything I consider worthy to be bottled, and then there will be no releases," she stressed.
"Bottling is my passion so it's not just a business organization. Therefore I select only the all-time to exist bottled because my name is at stake."
While Lim's whisky bottling journey may seem overjoyed, she is emphatic that her success did not come overnight. Being Malaysian and female person, she had to work harder to get the word out well-nigh her make. It took her a few years, through word of oral cavity, critical reviews and positive auction results to gain the confidence of consumers.
However, she believes that there are plenty of opportunities for independent bottlers considering many immature consumers are eager to acquire and try new things in Malaysia.
To convince this segment of whisky drinkers, Lim sets herself autonomously from the big players in terms of variety, quality, scarcity and price. "I take very strict requirements in selecting casks to be bottled. Together with my married man, we try 20 to 30 different casks on average every time we choose a whisky to bottle," she said.
She primarily selects scotch whisky from a single cask and every release is bottled at cask strength, without colouring and chill-filtration. This is what makes her whiskies scarce because every bottle boozer is one less in the world.
"The whisky bottlings were generally offered to end-consumers and I wanted a production which I could also offering to the bars. I played with the thought of creating my own gin for 2 years and after speaking to Malaysian bartenders and a Belgian distiller, I finally decided to go ahead with the idea," she recalled.
Lim afterwards created three locally inspired flavours named Nasty Nangka (jackfruit), Pandan Predator and Gawky Galangal, each fabricated with 17 different types of raw botanicals in pocket-size batches of 500 bottles. Distilled and bottled in Kingdom of belgium by De Cort Distillery, Lim chose this "field-to-canteen" distillery because she liked that they used only raw produce from farms.
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The distillery likewise doesn't use bogus flavourings and steeps its ingredients for 36 hours before distilling them in copper Holstein stills. "A lot of thought and effort went into the gin because one can hands tell the quality from tasting the gin neat. I even airfreighted the jackfruit over to Belgium for this gin," she enthused.
Despite this, she found that bottling a production like gin was not without its challenges. "When marketing my gins, I realised that many bars adopt to sell more cost-effective gins," she revealed.
"I'm competing at a premium level and that is not easy considering many consumers recall that a gin is merely a gin, unlike whisky where the consumer tin easily differentiate betwixt a premium whisky and others by the vintage."
Since the pandemic, Lim hasn't been able to return to Malaysia, but she reports that the virus has non dampened "spirits" in Europe, equally sales of whisky and wine spiked. However her dedicated distributors in Malaysia (Wholly Spirits), Singapore (The Auld Alliance) and Australia (Select Spirits) who sell her gin at bars were affected during lockdown.
In the meantime, Lim is looking at champagne: "I bought a 2022 single cask Champagne and I'thousand returning to Champagne at to the lowest degree [once] every twelvemonth to taste the Champagne I've bought to see when's the correct time for disgorgement. It'll exist really refreshing and exciting to bring out an independent bottling of single cask Champagne, which I believe is notwithstanding a rare sight in the marketplace."
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Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/people/malaysia-s-first-independent-whisky-bottler-ei-ling-lim-255571
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