Copenhagen Distillery: challenging conventions of whisky making
How do you create a distinctively Danish whisky, one that has a uniquely identifiable flavour profile that can stand up to the quality of established whisky-making regions? Master distiller Lasse Öznek shares his contemporary approach to distilling.
Copenhagen Distillery’s Öznek harnesses his background in pharmaceutical science to create distinctively Danish whisky – the kind of whisky he loves to drink.
His vision is clear: to challenge conventions of whisky making to push the boundaries of flavour, and be a leader in the Danish distilling scene.
“Don’t get me wrong, the whisky business is a business. But for me as a person, as a master distiller, this is a passion project,” Öznek says. “It’s a passion project, and that’s what it’s all about: doing things right, doing it in my own way, and bringing passion into everything that we do. We have some very strong core values that we treasure in the company and everything we do is based on these core values.”
The master distiller talks about wanting to “elevate” whisky making.
“Whisky making is an art that’s been there for centuries, and the great masters have done great in Scotland, in Ireland, in many countries. But after many years of blind-tasting whisky, we were at this point where we needed to try something new, have some new flavours,” he explains.
“There are so many good distilleries and what we also saw, if we look at the whisky landscape back in 2000, 2010 and 2017 when I joined the company, we started to see a lot of distilleries popping up in the new world, in Scandinavia, also you had Kavalan [in Taiwan] 25 years ago, I think Paul John [in India] was there, Teerenpeli from Finland was 25 years ago, one of the first in the Scandinavian countries.
“What I saw was people would go to Scotland and be inspired, and then try to make Scottish-type whisky because that was like the ‘gold standard’. I can fully understand it. And we did not want to do that. We wanted to make it completely different.
“We wanted to make new flavours. So, when you try our whisky, you know that it comes from Copenhagen. We need to be different. So, it’s not to innovate for the sake of innovation, but we actually felt there was room and it was high time that someone made something new.”
Last month, Copenhagen Distillery launched the fifth edition of its Raw series, celebrating five years since the first whisky release. Öznek leads a tasting of the new whisky, along with two other key expressions from the distillery, during this podcast episode.
The 15th episode of The Spirits Business Podcast with Öznek is now available to listen to on all major streaming platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon.
Alternatively, click the link below to listen to the latest episode.
Recent episodes have included exploring the benefits of digitising the spirits industry with the CEO of Proof 8, and a panel discussion on the future of spirits in partnership with ProWein/ProSpirits. Past guests have also included Becky Paskin, founder of the OurWhisky Foundation, and Fawn Weaver, CEO and founder of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, which is also available on YouTube.
Related news
Amber Lane creates ‘world-first’ Chartreuse whisky
