“I was like, ok, there are some serious whisky drinkers in Korea!” Ki One Distillery founder Bryan Do recalls. “I thought, yeah. We better make some damn good whisky.”

Do, a Korean-American, whisky-obsessed multi-hyphenate, first came to the country 25 years ago. According to him, at that time there were just two dedicated whisky bars. Now there are hundreds. In 2022, analyst Euromonitor ranked the country as the fastest-growing single malt market in the world. From a news anchor and quiz show host to Microsoft executive and even brewer, Do had long known that he liked whisky, but it wasn’t until 2018 that the stars aligned for him to set up his own site. What he’s built isn’t just any distillery — it’s Ki One, South Korea’s very first single malt maker.

“There’s a lot of new ground to be broken,” he says. “It’s a new category, so we’re making up a lot of things as we go. But we’ve focused on making sure that the quality is there. And that people know it’s from Korea.”

While Ki One is Korean through and through — the name means ‘beginning and hope’ in Korean — Do’s own whisky story actually started in Singapore. “I had some friends that introduced me to single malt. I think it was a Glen Grant 12 that got me in.”

Do’s passion for whisky grew and developed, and a life milestone got him thinking. “It was like, I’m about to turn 40. There’s got to be something else for me to do except wear a suit.” He started Seoul’s Hopscotch speakeasy with a friend, so named because of their love for both beer and single malt. From there, Do founded a brewery that was so successful he sold it to drinks giant AB InBev. Next, his attention turned to whisky, firm in the knowledge that nobody was making it anywhere in Korea.

Clearly, Do knows a lot about single malt, but, by his own admission, he’s not a distiller or blender. Through industry contacts, he reached out to well-known distilling consultant Andrew Shand. After being born, raised, and learning the distilling trade in Speyside, Shand’s career led him to senior production roles in Japan and Scotland before spending the latter part of his career setting up whiskey-making facilities across the US.

His 44-year career took him from his first foray in the industry as a cooper at The Glenlivet (where his dad had worked at Glenlivet before him) to a fortuitous meeting with Do. Embracing Do’s vision for crafting Korea’s first single malt, the two of them instantly hit it off.

“He’s an angry Scotsman, but in the best way,” Do says with a smile. There’s clearly a familial bond between them. In fact, Ki One was initially called Three Societies, honouring the melding of Korean, American, and Scottish cultures that led to Ki One.

Korea represented a fresh challenge for Shand. Fatigued by what he describes as “push-button” distillery builds in Scotland and having spent years in the US, he was up for something new. He flew out to Seoul to meet Do, and the partnership was cemented. Seven years on, and it’s the city Shand now calls home.

“There’s no point in me making Scotch whisky,” he states in his characteristically candid tones. “I want to give Korean whisky a distinct kind of flavour.” Once on board, he set out to find a site, striking gold on the elevated slopes in the shadow of a mountain. It’s just a 25-minute drive outside of the Korean capital.

Located in the mountain’s shadow, the distillery doesn’t get sun from the middle of November to the start of March. As the seasons change, the sub-zero temperatures give way to “unbelievable” heat in the summer. Coupled with the availability of mountain spring water, Shand knew this was the place. “But if you’re working at the distillery in the middle of winter, it’s not much fun,” he notes. “We have to work right through because if we dared stop, everything would just freeze up.” When we speak, he’s in the middle of a seven-day working week in a -20° Celsius cold snap.

Shand is delighted by how this climate influences whisky-making at Ki One. Fermentations run for around 144 hours, even in summer. “We let it get hot, we get all these funky flavours,” he gleefully tells me. He makes high cut points, too — there’s a signature that’s all about these rich, fruity notes. According to Do, Shand’s connections helped secure stills from Forsyths, Scotland’s pre-eminent still fabricators.

Then there’s the cask regimen. In addition to oloroso and Pedro Ximénez sherry casks and ex-bourbon barrels, Shand sources new American oak casks from Kentucky that he "absolutely loves” to really drive flavour. “Take a stave and look at it. You get the same level of spirit penetration after 18 months in Korea as you would after about eight years in Scotland.”

This extreme environment and its wild swings in temperature and humidity might give some makers a reason to pause, but Shand takes it all in stride, harnessing the variability to drive the flavours he wants to coax from the spirit. Fermentation alone can result in vastly different flavour compounds in far lesser temperature variations. “I don’t care about consistency,” Shand is adamant. Don’t compare what he’s built here to what we know about whisky through a Scotch-centric lens. “We don’t fight the climate. We use the climate to our advantage.” This is not what he terms a “Coca-Cola” operation, where everything is the same, day in, day out, and controlled with the touch of one button.

Another fingerprint of Do’s past that brings a uniquely Korean flavour is the fascination with local beer culture. While Ki One is a single malt, with a signature mash bill, both he and Shand are keen to play with beer malts. Around 20 per cent of their production falls into this experimental bracket. The results of early trials will be released soon. Shand specifically namechecks the stout malt. “People who like coffee are going to love this,” says Do. “They’ll never have tasted anything like it.”

Experimentation extends to maturation, too. “We take a lot of casks, give them to traditional Korean alcohol producers, and get them to put their product in it,” he explains. The casks then come back and get filled with Ki One new-make spirit. Shand’s previous work as a cooper means he can get hands-on. “I filled one with spicy red peppers, left them for three months, took the peppers out and then put the whisky in. It just about blows your head off,” he chuckles. “It’s like a jalapeño whisky.” (This spirit could be available later this year.)

More current, and very excitingly, is the arrival of the first permanent Ki One core range. Up until now, whisky has been released in batches. Now, the sweet and fruity Tiger (sherry and wine cask maturation); the bold, rich Eagle (new oak and ex-bourbon); and the smoky, earthy Unicorn (a peated release) are set to really demonstrate the distillery’s signature style.

For Do, it’s all about the Korean point of difference, and there’s a reference to Gochujang—Korea’s distinctive national chilli paste. “We really like that, it’s our kind of flavour,” he says. “Our spirit matures very, very quickly. It’s bold yet flavourful — there’s a lot of layers in there.” There’s a little bit of Asian spice on the finish, he notes. “We’re really happy that we’re able to get that flavour.”

More experiments are on the horizon for Do, Shand and the Ki One team. “We’ve got so many different things that we can have fun with,” Shand confides with a grin.

The formation of the Korean Whisky Association, alongside two other makers, is another step forward for the Korean whisky category. There’s a real drive here to build national and international recognition of Korean whisky, and Do is in talks with local officials to drive tourism, too. Ultimately, for Do, the project has always been driven by his passion for making authentic, delicious, and top-quality Korean whisky. It’s a sentiment Shand shares. “Whisky nowadays is made by numbers,” Shand concludes. “Not here. We make whisky from the heart.”

Learn more at www.kione.co.kr

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