The Porróncast
A Wine, Spirits and Non-Alc. Podcast spotlighting the stories of people who share the Porrón.
Hosted by Ryan Looper.
The Porróncast
The Artistic Alchemy of Gin and Vermouth: A Flavorful Journey with Stefan from BCN
BCN is a distillery and spirits project in Priorat, Spain that makes Craft Mediterranean Gin, and Artisan Vermouth.
CEO Stefan Lismond unveils his artistic approach to crafting gin and vermouth. Imagine gin-making as painting, where each bottle is a canvas, and balance, soul, and emotion are the strokes that bring it to life.
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The Porróncast is hosted and produced by Ryan Looper - @iamlooper
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Original Music by Julian Tamers - @juliantamers on IG and Tiktok
Welcome to the Peroncast.
Speaker 2:Here we are with Stefan from BCN, all the way from Barcelona, talking about the craft of gin and vermouth. Stay tuned, stefan, welcome, let's jump right in. How does someone make a great gin?
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a big question. I think it has to do with your soul.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Wow, I like this already. Yeah, I mean there are techniques. We completely step out of the normal way or how you should make a gin. I was completely inspired. I come from wine, so I was completely inspired by balance, length, intensity, complexity, so I was looking for a deep character. So I think you need sometimes I compare it like maybe a painter.
Speaker 1:You know before if you're going to make a painting. You know what you're going to paint, but you haven't seen the painting yet, until you finish it off, of course. So you take a road to something that you visionize, something that you feel, something that you want to make. You don't know exactly how it's going to be, but you need to know to take which road and how you want to get. There is the big adventure and I think if you put in your soul, if you put in your emotions, it's like art. You know. That's why I compare it with a painting. So, yeah, that's how I think you make a great gin.
Speaker 2:How do you make a great gin tonic? How do you do a perfect serve?
Speaker 1:In our case, our gin is the base. Alcohol is distilled from grapes In our case, grenache and Carignan. If there's one characteristic of my gin, it's that it has a real vinic character in our case, grenache and Carignan. If there's one characteristic of my gin, it's that it has a real vinic character. So what we do is we use a little bit of red wine when we make our gin tonic. When you chill your glass with ice, I add a drop of red wine, swirl it around, then you take away the liquid. The wine stays on the ice cubes in the glass. The glass really smells like red wine and then just to make my gin tonic in it and this pairing of red wine with my gin and tonic, it really comes all together. You know, it really gives that extra balance to our gin tonic.
Speaker 1:Is there a proportion that you like of gin to tonic, specifically bcn? Definitely very, very important. As I said in the beginning, balance is really uh, what for me it's all about, and that's also for a good gin and tonic. You need the right balance. So what we recommend for on 200 milliliters of tonic, we recommend about 35 milliliters of gin, which is low comparison maybe with other brands, but our gin is very intense, very complex, and we get this balance with this lower gin, or maybe even lower alcohol, gin and tonic, if you want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I found myself with my wife during the pandemic times drinking a fair amount of BCN gin tonics and it was a moment of sharing in a tough time and it always gave me a smile because I think BCN offers a fuller, truer flavor impact than a lot of gins. It has its own specific personality and yet it fulfills a promise of a great gin. And to me there's a lot of branded gin, a lot of muscle memory call gin, and bcn feels like something really real which I keep coming back to. I've heard that switching gears here. I've heard that you're a really, really excellent cook. I think that's a nice thing to heard that you're a really, really excellent cook. I think that's a nice thing to have when you're a distiller too, probably. But what is the thing if someone comes over to your place and you throw something together? What do you really love to cook?
Speaker 1:Well, almost anything. For me, it's basically. It depends on the ingredients. What can I get my hands on? And that's where I first decide in my raw materials. Where is the quality? If I find good quality ingredients, I can cook with almost anything. Ingredients are important. The persons, or the person I cook for, is also very important, so it really gives me a good vibe to know that you are invited to my home. If you would come along, what would I make for you? That's a very good question.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's all right, here we are. Okay, no pressure. What would you make for me?
Speaker 1:Well, it's definitely going to be Mediterranean. My first idea would be fish, but again, it needs to be fresh. If it's caught on the same day, that would really make us really happy, because that's what makes the real quality of a fresh fish. I probably would try to use my gin to give a slow maceration, maybe on the fish before I cook it, to give it that. You know, one of the ingredients, for instance, in the botanicals that we use is wild fennel, which I believe works, matches very good with the wild fish, and maybe as a second plate, maybe I would I would cook you a rabbit that is marinated in my vermouth. We are now. We're talking man.
Speaker 2:This is great. Now we're talking man.
Speaker 1:This is great. I would use some dried grapes and nuts. I would definitely use some almonds, hazelnuts, maybe Looking for that character of. If you come to visit us in the Priorat wineries where we make our gin, these are all local ingredients that grow there and they're all part of my gin. One of the secret ingredients in my gin is exactly almond that we also distill. Normally we don't communicate this, but it's a secret. But well, there you go, you got one.
Speaker 2:In terms of your inspiration for starting BCN. You're located in Priorat local ingredients.
Speaker 1:How did it start the distiller, my first partner. He was distilling. He was already making a grappa, together with René Barbier, one of the main wine producers in the area, so we got to know each other. We really became very good friends and I remember we had a meeting. He was sitting on the terrace having a beer.
Speaker 1:I just arrived there and one of the first things he said to me he said Stefan, what do you think if we make a gin? And immediately my answer was yes, let's make Barcelona gin, the brand Barcelona, the lifestyle in Barcelona. When I arrived in 91 in Barcelona, I fell in love with that city and it was thriving in my head for years already. How can I use this brand? What can I? You know which product I make? I was, I was into cava also, so I was thinking of barcelona, cava, or. But when philip said let's make a gin, barcelona has the name of being the capital of gin tonics in europe and unconsciously, immediately path the concept jumped into my head and and basically that was it. That's that we were off starting to make Barcelona gin, you know, which inspired me to do a terroir gin using only local ingredients representing the area. And the whole idea was like, really, how can I bottle the lifestyle, the vibes of that city? How can I bring it into a glass? You know that was the real idea.
Speaker 2:What is vermouth culture like in Spain? Contextually, here in the US, there have been many tries to bring vermouth culture here and in some cases it's succeeded, but it's not to the level that I think a lot of us, who have tried to do this over and over and over again, we're expecting and we're always trying to recreate this amazing vermouth culture that is very present in Spain and Torino, some other you know great places. So what is vermouth culture?
Speaker 1:it's. It's quite simple actually when you have that culture. Of course, recreating it is always something else, but I remember years, years ago. For instance, in my village where I live, falsette, there is this beautiful square, old square, in the center of the village and I remember we used to meet up there with friends, spanish people. They meet up on Sunday before lunch. They go outside Well, life is always outside on the streets so they meet up to do the vermouth, to have an aperitif, basically before the Sunday lunch.
Speaker 1:So the typical thing is you sit down at a table, you meet each other, you order some anchovies, some olives and you get a bottle of vermouth on the table. You get a bottle of soda water on the table also, to make it a little bit longer Depends on the type of vermouth that you're drinking. And it's just that that's the moment, that's the really anard de vermouth, that's the really classical or the real way for Spanish people or Catalan people to enjoy vermouth. It's really aperitif. We see today that it's slowly coming into nightlife also. It's not an aperitif per se anymore, it becomes a long drink. People are mixing it now with cava, sparkling or tonic, especially young people. So it's growing into more than this aperitif. So it's growing into more than this operative, but the image of the Sunday morning coming together, that's the real thing about the Vermouth.
Speaker 2:Incredible. I'd like to walk through the BCN products that are in the US and just talk about how you make them, some of the uses you found with them, and I'd like to start with the BCN gin, the BCN Mediterranean gin, and just talk to Tell me about how you make this and what's in it, as if we were talking at a bar and I was about to use it.
Speaker 1:First of all, like every gin, it starts off with a base alcohol. In our case it's a kind of a grappa really, but it's pure alcohol, 96.4%. That grappa base alcohol that we have is, uh, it's not neutral. It already has uh, flavors and aromas, from the grenage de carignan grapes mainly which is very unusual the complexity of aromas is very, very high. When you start to use different aromas, a lot of things happen. It's not that when you have an aromatic character and you want to add another aroma to it, it doesn't work like that. You add another aroma to it, but everything changes and new aromas are created. So it's a lot of trial and error, like finding a formula, like how do you really make, how you come to your formula, especially how we do it. I think I took one of the most difficult ways to make a gin. I also always say that it's very easy to make a bad gin, but it's very difficult to make a very superb gin.
Speaker 1:We worked like eight months on our formula, trying our trial and error. Basically, we distilled almost any botanical that we could get our hands on. Everything is growing wild in the area where I live, also the juniper berries in the mountain. So we started to distill every botanical Like different when it comes to the aromas, different like in wine. We can separate these aromas. We can have distillates, and there you start blending them together and doing tryouts. Distillates, and there you start blending them together, doing tryouts.
Speaker 1:But you need to know where you're going to because it's it's really endless. Uh, how, how you the combinations you can do. It's such a high complexity that you have to concentrate on which direction you want to go. In our case, we wanted to recreate the Mediterranean taste. So as I I love cooking, I love those flavors, I really knew where I wanted to go with this and that's how we got there. I probably can't repeat this in my life, you know, it's really one thing that we did. And also, once we got the first batch on the market, we got feedback also from consumers. So we had to change a little stuff. So in our case, once we have the base alcohol, we use the botanicals and we macerate them on this base alcohol. The herbs on one side, the rosemary, the thyme, the pine shoots, the juniper berries go differently.
Speaker 1:Then we have the citrics, the orange and the lemon peel and we also do a vapor distillation of fig fruit, for me a very Mediterranean touch. It gives a fruity touch to our gin. It gives a little sweet sensation to the gin, although it's very dry, but it brings everything together a little bit. You get this licorice taste also from the grapes and it's a whole game going on there. It's an experience. Our gin, you know, it's not just, it's not like a London dry gin, which is very straightforward, vertical, few peaks of aromas. We work with balance. There are no peaks, there's not one aroma that jumps out. It's really. It's like maybe how I would make a wine more than a spirit. All these things you find out. It's not that it's everything afterwards it's easier to explain than during the process.
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah, so the the grape base is from local grapes. You make the grappa, you do the macerations. Are you individually distilling each of the citrics and the herbs and then re-blending?
Speaker 1:Exactly that's what we do. So we have the base alcohol that we use for the macerations. Once we have the macerations done, we re-distill and then comes the last part, in which is the blending. And then there is one part of the production which is our big secret, which I'm not going to tell you. But basically I'm not going to tell you how we do it. But what we do is inspired by the molecular kitchen that made Catalonia on gastronomic level. It became very famous in the world. Ferran Adria is, like, probably the biggest guy behind this movement. So we were really inspired by this, and what we do is we open the molecular structure of our alcohol by opening that structure the probability that the taste aroma ends in your taste bud, on your tongue, in your mouth, mouth goes up five to 10 times.
Speaker 1:You get a very higher taste sensation. Same thing with Ferran Adrià If he gives you a spoon of cucumber foam, for instance. You get it in your mouth. It really explodes on taste level and that's because of opening that molecular structure. So yeah, that's what we do.
Speaker 2:Let's take a break and I'll be right back with Stefan from BCN. You're listening to the Peroncast. Let's talk about vermouth. Stefan, how do you make the BCN vermouth both of them and I will tell you that when I first tasted them, they're so specific and different than a lot of the other vermouths out there. I had an immediate sensation of a really great producer in Italy called Vergano. So tell me, how did you go about? How do you make these? How did you find the inspiration?
Speaker 1:You know, a vermouth is a fortified wine. So it's definitely the fortification which made me decide to make a vermouth, because the fortification is exactly the alcohol that you want to add to your wine which gives the accents to a vermouth. A vermouth is a wine. Normally it's started off with a white wine. That you do that you macerate botanicals on that wine. You get a base character. Maceration doesn't lift up all the aromas as much as distillate, but it gives you a base of uh, of a lot of flavors and a base uh to build on. And by doing that uh, bringing that maceration, that uh fortification on top of it, uh, you really give it the character that you want to give it for me.
Speaker 1:Honestly, most of the spanish vermouths I don't like at all. Why is that? Because they are very, very sweet. They use loads of sugar, which they use a lot of times to hide the bad quality of the wine. A lot of people are making vermouths from wines that are re-fermented or wines that are oxidated Wines. They really should throw away, you know, but they have it there. So if you throw a lot of sugar in it and you add some aromas to it, you don't even have to do a maceration with fresh herbs or botanicals. You make a very simple vermouth. Most of the vermouths in Spain are very simple, very cheap, also because this production process but that means you don't have a deep experience it's really really very light, very.
Speaker 1:That said, there are, of course, superb vermouths to be found in Spain, but in general, I really saw something there that could be improved. You know, that could be made better. Maybe also as well as gin. These are two categories in alcohol which are not really protected, which are not. There's no appellation behind it. There is nobody really telling you how you should make it, what you should put in it.
Speaker 1:And I'm all about freedom and I could do here really what I wanted to do. I hate it when somebody tells me what I should do and how I should do it. And with a Vermouth I could do this, I could really go my own way. I could really do something how I feel I should do it, how I get inspired by doing it. And again, you know, I come to a very unique taste profile at the end by taking this road, and I like that very much. You know, I studied industrial design at the academy. I finished my studies in Barcelona, so I need to put creativity in everything I do. I just can't make a vermouth by the book. I will follow my intuition, my emotions, my feelings and I will try to get them in there, you know, and that's how I could do it. You know that's one of the big reasons I chose. You know there were other ideas of doing other types of drink, but the gin and the vermouth are both something I really wanted to get into. I really love to do it.
Speaker 2:So you have two vermouths, you have Ambre and you have Negre. Correct, how do you make?
Speaker 1:the Ambre, the Ambre we start off with. I think that's one of the biggest differences. Also, we use old vines. They're really we're not sure if they're 90 years or 110 years old, but they are around 100 years old. So we purchase grapes in Gandessa and so our base wine is already from a very high quality.
Speaker 1:I have chosen the white Grenache grape to make a vermouth. The white Grenache is a quite oxidative grape. It's a grape with a very thin skin. It has a high content of natural tannins into it. It's actually a difficult grape to make fine wines with it, to make elegant products with it. But the oxidational character into it, the high tannins for me were very suitable or that's what I really was looking for to get in my Vermouth. It's not a Porto, it's not a Gerez, it's not just a sweet wine. You can play with the character. You can play with a little bit of oxidation, with a little bit of a sensation of aging, a sensation of barrel, because of the height, the natural tenons that the grape has. So that was very important for me. To start off with this white Grenache, old vines. You ferment your wine, then we do a maceration from three to six weeks with different botanicals.
Speaker 1:We use exactly the same botanicals as the gin rosemary, thyme, wild fennel, pine shoots, juniper berry. We use the citrics also. We also use we have to. Of course, the main ingredient for a vermouth is wormwood, which is another thing that I haven't mentioned before when we were talking about Spanish vermouth. Most of the Spanish vermouths don't have a bitterness because they are so sweet. For me, a vermouth really has to end in a bitterness and it really reinforces the ideals of an aperitif before lunch. So warm wood is a very main, important ingredient. Apart from that, we also use cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, pod laurel to get it a little bit more, this typical character of what you would expect from a vermouth. Once this maceration is done, the wine is filtered and then we're going to fortify it with a distillate.
Speaker 1:The distillate is the same base alcohol, like the grappa that we use for the gin, and we do a maceration of elderflower orange peel. With the orange peel it's very important. The white flesh on the inside of the peel yeah, there is a third ingredient. Flesh on the inside of the peel yeah, there is a third ingredient. So, yeah, we do. We add the distillate, which what we distill is elderflower and orange peel. That gives really that typical character to our vermouth. You know, in Spain they will always serve you vermouth with a piece of orange in it. It matches really well to it. So I wanted to blend that already into my vermouth. So that's why we work with these ingredients.
Speaker 2:Great, and then it's basically finished, correct. The vermouth is finished that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Once you fortify it or you blend in the fortification, that's it. You bottle it.
Speaker 2:And then with the Negre, you take that same vermouth and you age it in barrel Correct.
Speaker 1:One of the ingredients I haven't mentioned yet is, of course, sugar. In our case, we do 82 grams of sugar per liter. If you compare it with a martini, they go 180 grams. That's a shocker to me it is that is a lot to me it is. That is a lot. That is extremely too much. You know, like again, you can use very bad wines to start off with the more sugar that you use.
Speaker 2:So Martini has a huge million production of liters, so I feel like it's a Herculean effort to to produce vermouth in an artisan way. That also is a little outside of canon, because it's not so sweet. You get a distinct bitterness on the end and it becomes a true aperitif tool. Definitely In a sense like a truer vermouth aperitif.
Speaker 1:So the thing that we do with the paralyzed or the negre. It's exactly the same vermouth but there are two differences. We do nine months barrel aging on a third or sometimes four or five years used barrel from the Priora 500 liter barrel. I like the bigger size of barrel. And the other thing that is different is the sugar that we put in the barrel aged vermouth. We caramelize before we put it in.
Speaker 1:Basically for the taste character, it leans more into the woodiness, the smokiness, the tobacco, the leather that you get from the barrel, but also for the color. By caramelizing the sugar we get this deeper brown, darker color into it. So that's why we also call it Negere and the first one the Amber, the non-barrel aged. Actually, the Amber color of this vermouth was inspired by the classical vermouth they make in my village in Valset, the cooperative. For more than 100 years they've been making their type of vermouth, also with white Grenache, and I always liked very much this in between. You know, not white, not red, but yeah, this amber color. So I really, through the skin of the orange peel, I get this natural golden amber color to my gin.
Speaker 2:Do you just like the vermouth on the rocks with soda on the side, just as anyone would serve on the Eau de la Vermouth? Is that how you think?
Speaker 1:of it, definitely, definitely. I like both my gin and my vermouth, neat on its own. That's the way. That's what I created, really that's.
Speaker 2:Oh, so you prefer?
Speaker 1:neat. Yes, that's really when I finish my job. It's neat, you know, I must say, with my gin. Of course you try it out with a tonic and how it behaves with a tonic, but the character of course changes. If you really want to perceive the art that we put in our drinks, enjoy it. It. That said, I believe also there is a moment for how you experience a drink. I think that's very, very important. I mean, let's say, we all come together for a big party. It's like 8 o'clock in the afternoon, the sun is still burning a little bit, it's still hot.
Speaker 2:I love how you think 8 o'clock is the afternoon but it's perfect. For you it probably is. Well, it's pain yes.
Speaker 1:So then, maybe you know, I would love to drink it with a sparkling touch to it or with a soda water to it. It's more refreshing, it's longer, you know, compared to it's 12 o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:Meaning noon to most of us.
Speaker 1:And you're sitting down, you know, on your terrace, and you have your moment, and you're sitting down, you know, on your terrace, and you have your moment, you're kind of going into a meditation moment. Then you know I would drink it neat, I would let the aromas inspire me, go around in my mouth, I would really experience this drink. But then I need time, it needs to be relaxed.
Speaker 2:I feel like that speaks to BCN. It's like giving just a little bit of time, a little bit of patience, because most of these other things in both of these categories are drink as fast as you can situations. So I'm very, very thankful to have you in town and I'm thankful for the kind of craft you put into BCN.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much For me. You know, again, as it is loaded on this artistic side for me, on this creation of what I do, I'm actually very proud of what I did and I do, I'm actually very proud of what I did. Being here in a city like this, it's the center of the world, you know.
Speaker 2:New.
Speaker 1:York, and my spirits are here in the center of the world. So it gives me an extremely good feeling and I'm very proud of it.
Speaker 2:Thanks a lot, man. Thank you Thanks for listening to the Perron cast. I'm your host, ryan Looper. Today's episode was produced by yours truly, theme music by the Julian Tamers. Special thanks to today's guests, the teams at Demaison East and Demaison Selections and all of the growers in the Demaison portfolio. Remember, if you turn the bottle around, you find the Perron. That's Demaison, and if you have a Perron at a party, you should really share that thing. Quit hogging it. Okay, Pass the Perron. If you like the podcast, you want to find it on one of the platforms, just search the Perroncast, hit, follow. We got lots more to come. We're also on the Instagram at the Perrone cast. Look forward to sharing some more with you soon. Thanks,
