When we were first asked “do you want to visit a sweet potato distillery?” we had no idea what to say. A quick Google of Heng Chi Distillery showed some very interesting international award wins for barrel aged product so we figured we’d accept the invite and pop by. This was supposed to be a quick detour on our travel across Taiwan but it ended up being a trip highlight.

Pulling up to a corrugated warehouse on the outskirts of Taichung there isn’t much to give away that award winning craft spirits are made here. However, you could say the same about many Scottish or American distilleries. Stepping into their warehouse and tasting area and things look similar to the West at first glance – there’s barrels galore. These are Virgin French Oak casks of varying size and char that are all used to age the spirits produced by Heng Chi. However, next to them is an equal sized space being utilized for 15 litre jars filled with infusions and experiments. At any one time at Heng Chi there are 100 different products ageing. It’s this experimentation with ingredients that made Heng Chi such an experience above and beyond what you’d usually expect from a distillery tour.

The Heng Chi story begins with sweet potatoes. The distillery, opened in 2017, came about after its founder Kinou Lou tried Japanese sweet potato shochu and wondered why they weren’t making similar in Taiwan. The humble sweet potato has a deeply rooted (no pun intended) history on the island going back 400 years. It’s certainly been used in alcohol production before, but not necessarily legally or with extensive cask ageing involved. For context, Taiwan’s main local spirit, Kaoliang, is made from sorghum and aged in clay jars. Sweet potatoes are not only a cheap ingredient but they also require very little processing to get started. They can swiftly go from marketplace to mash.

Heng Chi buys up sweet potatoes that aren’t usable for cooking and ferments them with Koji. Distillation takes place in a former cognac alembic that’s heated with LPG and connected to a worm tub-like condenser. The LPG is a challenging fuel to work with and the still has taken a beating from it, but the team at Heng Chi said it remains their best option. The distillery also produces neutral spirits for some of their infusions. This is done by redistilling the tails in a locally made steel column still. Once distilled, the ageing process is the next challenge for the team. Given Taiwan’s climate most of Heng Chi’s products are aged for only two to three years as beyond that the angel’s share gets enormous. The team said that after four years losses can be up to 30%. They have some experimental casks that are up to six years old with losses of around 70%. This is compared to the 2% figure that gets thrown about for Scotland.

Our tasting started with the core of the range like most distillery tours. Though Heng Chi’s core product comes in at a whopping 60% ABV. Their main Sweet Potato Spirit is unaged and is what it says on the tin. It’s been produced since 2017. and with some success at international awards already I had high expectations going in. I wasn’t disappointed. For me this was a heavy hit of pear on the palate, a little bit of floral rose, and cotton candy on the finish. It’s very quaffable for the ABV.

This was followed by the core barrel aged expression known as Taruma Gold. There is some variation between batches here and I’m told the one I was trying had spent 38 months in a second fill of the French oak. I struggled with this one, there were significant heady floral and carraway note that overwhelmed the others such as baking spice or woodsmoke. 

The real magic followed next. We were given a sample of a special release that uses red sweet potatoes which are smaller and have a creamier taste when baked. It was bottled at 53% ABV and had a radically different profile. The nose is deceptively whisky-like with vanilla, mint and cinnamon. Given this blind I would have guessed some sort of rye. The palate is radically different with lychee and rose taking over to the point where I started to wonder if something had been lost in translation and these flavours had been infused – they have not. The finish is plums and toasted oak. This was one we purchased a bottle of right away.

The tasting area for Heng Chi isn’t some special room or styled bar, but a table set out among the barrels and infusion jars. You can smell the spirit in the air and feel the heat of the near-tropical environment as you sip away. We weren’t just served from the charming squat bottles you’ll see above. The team started slamming down heavy jars of infusions to sample. Spooning measures out of a big plastic jar is not as photogenic as the classic ‘whisky thieving’ but exploring the wilder half of the distillery was a lot of fun. Each of these infusions begins life as a 15 litre jar with those that win on flavour being scaled up to 1500 litre production runs. Osmanthus, orange and ginger were among the delicious ones we tried, but we wanted to call out some of the stranger ones here.

We sampled one infusion that used entirely local peppercorns from the mountains of Taiwan. This one was, as you guessed it, peppery and herbal, but certainly not undrinkable. A rose petal infusion had a nose that reminded me of old Pedro Ximenez sherry. It tasted much more like the roses it was but this would have made an incredible highball. The most unexpected was a bitter gourd infusion. Imagine Rum Agricole with all the sweetness sucked out. Bittersweet grass and cucumber. We thought it would make a great tonic mixer for people who like vegetal notes in their spirits.

As we were wrapping up tasting we took a look at their non-sweet potato spirits. Heng Chi dabbles in rum from muscovado sugar and even tried making a carrot whisky. The rum was incredible, hitting a balance between sweet and dry with plenty of rich vanilla and spice flavours from the virgin oak. We would have grabbed a bottle of that if it wasn’t heartbreakingly out of stock. The carrot and sweet potato spirit was fun and very reminiscent of English ryes like Circumstance or Adnams with just a hint of carrot cake!

Heng Chi is not a distillery with a slick visitors centre or structured tour. It’s antithetical to Kavalan on the other side of the mountains. A trip here isn’t about the romance of spirits production, but about experimentation and flavour. It’s about turning unwanted and ugly sweet potatoes into the widest array of delicious alcohol possible. Nothing we tried was undrinkable, even the things that sounded like they might be, and much of it was fantastic. As someone who likes adventurous flavours I had to check with others that I wasn’t crazy. I opened our bottle of red sweet potato spirit at Capital Whisky Club recently and received rave reviews from fellow enthusiasts. It’s definitely not whisky, but it was made by whisky lovers and it’s bloody good.

If you are in Taiwan on the whisky trail and want to try something different then we wholeheartedly recommend Heng Chi distillery. As a spirits enthusiast it was the highlight of my entire trip and I was buzzing with excitement about it for days after. Cheers to the humble tuber!

Currently you cannot visit Heng Chi without a locally arranged appointment. Ours was organised through Edison Tours.