Purely Patagonian – An Interview with TRÄ•KÁL’s Master Distiller, Sebastian Gomez

You rarely encounter a spirit that is so unique that it cannot be easily classified within existing spirit designations. I first encountered TRÄ•KÁL at a spirit tasting held at Hodges Bend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Shout out to Provisions for organizing the event!) I tasted through several cocktails featuring this unique Patagonian spirit, and the master distiller, Sebastian Gomez, was present to talk about his process and describe what makes TRÄ•KÁL so unique. 

For starters, TRÄ•KÁL is produced exclusively with ingredients found within 100 square kilometers of the distillery’s water source in Patagonia. If you’re not familiar with Patagonia, it’s one of the most beautiful spaces you’ll ever see. It’s a small region in South America that includes parts of Chile and Argentina. A quick Google search and you’ll quickly see the appeal of opening a distillery there. 

The base spirit for TRÄ•KÁL is created with regional apples and pears, then seven native herbs and four types of native berries are added. The use of apples and pears makes it similar to an eau de vie, which is a fruit brandy. However, in my opinion, the addition of the herbs and berries produces a flavor profile that is more like a gin, just without the piney Juniper notes.  During the tasting, Gomez, an ardent storyteller, captivated my attention with his tales so much that I realized I had to learn more than the evening would allow. After the event, I introduced myself and we exchanged contact info. Once he made it back to Patagonia, we setup up a Skype call so I could get the full story of Patagonia’s only native spirit. 

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Interview

Andrew Saliga: Let’s start with the easy stuff. What does the name TRÄ•KÁL mean? 

Sebastian Gomez: Sure. Tra means courage and valor. Kal is like an act… to do… action. So it’s an act of bravery or courage. Together it’s used more like a badge of honor. More than a compliment even. To the tip of the spear, the first warrior in battle. The bravest warrior. It doesn’t mean the most senior warrior in the hierarchy, it just means the bravest one.  It’s in a language called Tsegundun, that’s a dialect of the Huilliche people. They’re a small ethnic group in Chile. Huilliche means “people from the southern coast”. There are only about 150 or 200 people that understand Tsegundun, and even fewer that speak it. Fortunately, they’re mostly located about 50 or 60 kilometers from our distillery in an area called Caleta Condor. 

Saliga: Does TRÄ•KÁL have any connection to them other than the use of their language? 

Gomez: Yes. The head of the distillery is half Huilliche. His grandfather’s surname is recognized as being one of the families of indigenous peoples. I spent time with them and went to Caleta Condor and other places and got to understand the flavors, history, and traditions. 

Saliga: You said that you left working for Diageo to start this project. Is there a personal connection to naming it TRÄ•KÁL, considering what the name means? 

Gomez: It means a lot to me, personally, because it was a series of words that came down from the people around me. I think that’s why it resonated with me. There was about a year and a half where I didn’t know what to call it. But when TRÄ•KÁL appeared it seemed absolutely right. It has been a very good name in the sense that people understand it to be different and to sound authentic. I think only the Scandinavians read into it, because it’s written the same way as if you were to write in the Nordic languages, “charred wood.” But it’s pronounced completely different because the accent and the two dots on the first A of TRÄ•KÁL is not meant for the Scandinavian pronunciation. It’s meant for the Tsegundun pronunciation. If you come down to Patagonia you will see quite a lot of names and places written in this way.

My company down in Chile is called Aguafria, which means cold water. I like to read about the booze business and the history of booze all over the place, and Aguafria is in line with what I alluded to before. You have vodka that means spirited water. Whiskeybae which is the source from the Latin and got adapted into the Celtic for whiskey. That means the water of life. Aguardiente in Spanish means fiery water. So calling it Aguafria would be pretty cool considering we’re from the ice lands of the south, right? Cold water, ice, lakes, mountains, the Andes. It just seemed to go well. So the distillery and the company, too, is called Aguafria. It came along because I’m a big Johnny Cash fan, and Johnny Cash has a song called, “Big Iron,” which is one of my favorites, and it starts in the town of Aguafria. So I was listening to Johnny Cash, and the name came up. Aguafria is a town in Texas and I went, “Oh, that makes sense.” It was one of these serendipitous moments.

When you’re choosing the name for something it’s kind of weird. I don’t have any children, but I imagine it’s got to be that same sensation that when you have a kid you talk it through with your partner and say, “What do you want to name him or her?” It was kind of important because it had to represent our adventurous spirit. The fact that we were making our own path, and making our own destiny, and, yikes, trying to be authentic as well. 

I didn’t think it right to call it Gomez Spirit or something like that. It would’ve sounded stupid, right? But if you think about it a lot of the world’s great brands are just the owner’s names, like Jameson, or Johnnie Walker, or Bacardi. This was a long and arduous process which was very considered and I’m glad that the local people helped me with it.

Saliga: Speaking towards that authenticity, I found what you shared about the challenges of starting the distillery very interesting. You mentioned having to peel the apples by hand. Often, people see a beautifully finished product and don’t know about the backstory.  

Gomez: Yeah, there were a lot of hard decisions, a lot of doubts. I made the choice to get going in January 2013. I couldn’t ignore what I wanted to do any longer, and I made some sacrifices and changes and I realized that if I was going to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible I needed to shake things up in my life. I couldn’t sit around and wait for other people to help me out or even try to pretend to be comfortable and continue the lifestyle that I had become accustomed to. I knew I had to start from the beginning and what gave me the focus was the product. 

I realized that every day that I wasn’t dedicating myself to making the product that I would put my name to was one day further away from achieving that goal.

I almost became obsessed with it and made some big changes. I sold everything I had and moved in with a buddy to keep my costs low. Every chance where I could learn and read about distillation I would. I think I worked harder at putting this thing together for myself, under my own pressure, than I did in any job I ever had. 

This wasn’t a lifestyle choice where I was going to sit on top of a volcano, and smell the leaves, and whisper to the pumas, it was absolutely the opposite. It was absolutely the opposite. It was a lot of reading, a lot of travel, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of getting rid of superfluous shit, which that stuff… at first, you call it superfluous stuff and then you realize you never needed it anyway, so it’s just shit.

And so I reset everything. 

I was running out of days. My visitor’s visa was expiring. I had to get this juice [batch] done for the university, at a particular time, and no one else was going to peel those apples. It had to be me. I knew if I didn’t do it then I would have pectin in that juice, and then when I kept distilling it would have methanol in it, and then I would waste all of my time and all of my money. So, I had to do it and I only had a penknife. It was a Swiss Army penknife, and I was renting a 10-year-old Volkswagen pickup car, called a Saveiro. It’s like a Jetta but it’s got two doors and a bed in it like a pickup truck, and one day it was full of apples, the other day it was full of pears. And I peeled both beds by hand for a weekend. 

I had no choice. I had to do it.

And when you’re doing that kind of stuff everyone thinks you’re crazy because you’re on the wrong side of 30, and you’ve traveled a lot, and you’ve been to eat at nice places, and stayed in nice hotels, and all of a sudden you’re sitting in shorts and flip flops and it’s the end of the summer, and the only one keeping you company is the dog for the farm across the way. You end up doing that for 48 hours straight then you go, “This is what I asked for. This is what I wanted to do. So I’m doing it and I can’t complain.”

 Saliga: How do you think it would’ve been different if your story was like some of the big booze brands where someone with money wants their name on a label, but they’re not involved? Where they don’t have actual skin in the game doing the hands-on work. 

Gomez: Well, listen, that would be a lot easier so I don’t blame them. It makes sense, but I went off the grid to do something outside of the booze making grid. I went to a place where there isn’t that option. I was talking to an old mentor of mine at Diageo and I was explaining the project and what I was doing, and he said, “Well why don’t you get a distillery on the outskirts of Santiago and you bring the ingredients to them?” And I said, “No, we bring the distillery to the ingredients, not the ingredients to the distillery, then we are going to be authentic.” And it came out of my heart, it came out of my soul. We bring the distillery to the ingredients, not the ingredients to the distillery. And he says, “Do you realize it’s going to make everything more expensive, more difficult?” 

And I said, “Yeah, I know because I’m doing it for myself.”

I was taught by my parents, that if you’re going to do something, and learn how to do something, you do it from the beginning. If you get an office job you need to work the coffee machine first. If you’re going to be a racing car driver you got to learn the stick shift instead of the automatic. 

That’s just a mentality that’s always been in my family growing up. My family wasn’t like, “Oh, we’re going to order pizza.” No, you want to eat pizza? We’ll make it from scratch. So I was nine, 10, 11 years old making pizza and my mom is teaching me how to make bread and cook from scratch. And we had pizza–we had great pizza.

It’s a very practical approach growing up in a household like that. And it’s ironically impractical because when someone’s managing a project in a business, it makes sense to do those things like you’re alluding to. There’s plenty of brands that do that. I’ve seen it. I’ve met a bunch of people who say they’re distillers and stuff like that, and great. Good on them, but they actually don’t distill. They hire people to do that. I chose to do something where I had to explain, to the guys that were welding the equipment how I wanted it, what a condenser is for, why it has to be copper, and why it has to be steel, why it has to be this shape, why the metal has to be this thickness. Those are things I had to learn myself.

Saliga: Tell me more about your custom stills. You use different stills at various steps? 

Gomez: Absolutely. There are three distillations and each one requires a different still design. The first ones are a very straight forward, almost like an Appalachian pot, where there’s a 90 degree line arm on top of a big pot. There’s two of them. They share a condenser and they’re basically used for extracting the alcohol from the fermented juices, period. Nothing else. No great science to that. They’re all steel and they work, that’s it.

The next one is a big one. Big column, which is basically designed for mixing that alcohol with the concentrated berry juices. So the alcohol is taking the glycerols, basically, in that distillation through to the third distillation. Which it requires, because, you see, when you compare different sources of alcohol, some have more glycerol than others. We know how grapes and apples have more than wheat, but what I’m doing with TRÄ•KÁL is super extreme, because I needed an ethanol and water solution that had a lot of glycerol in it so it would bond best to the essential oils. So that meant that I had to do that second distillation before I did the third, and final, distillation, which is where the final design is all copper, it has an agitator in it, there are no plates in it, and it’s a very slow distillation at just the right temperature. The combination of the pot getting the same temperature quickly, at the same time, the temperature being an exact point, the agitator looks like the propeller of a speedboat, 50 RPM spinning these 400 plus liters worth of thick alcohol and essential oils. And then that goes through a very thick, broad column with no plates in it. This impregnates the alcohol with all the flavors, and it comes out very much perfumed.

So, you see, there are three different pots for the three different distillations. Each distillation has a purpose. The first one, it doesn’t really matter the apples or the pears that I use, I know they’re local and that’s good enough for me, but that’s just the alcohol that comes through there. The second one is to give it that increased relative density from the berries, and then the final one is to really mix, Think of a stew, or a soup, really cooking slowly. Mixing it, mixing it, mixing it, so the flavors are all combined. And then coming out very slowly and then capturing that in a very efficient condenser. It’s a big condenser that I use in my final distillation. In fact, it’s so inefficient it comes out at a lower ABV. The reason being because I want the water that comes through there also to come through with the flavor. My distillation is not designed to get the water out. The second and third distillations are to add flavor.

Think of it as a painting. The first step gives you an outline. So that’s your base. You need a frame base, a sort of a canvas. In the second one you need form. You need an outline and that’s what the relative density compensation of the berries, what the glycerol does. And then the detail comes in during the third distillation with the essential oils. So you paint a picture, the canvas, the outline, and the details, in each one of those different distillations. So just like a painter will use different brushes, thick brush to do the canvas, and then another brush to do the outline, and then a very fine brush to do the details. 

Those three designs evolved through trial and error. It took a lot of time. It took a year and a half of beating metal to get it right.

Saliga: And a lot of tasting with locals as well because you said that you wanted them to accept the flavor profile of the spirit, as much as people outside of Patagonia? 

Gomez: Yes. It wasn’t a lot of different people. It was the people I trusted–the people I had on hand. They had an upbringing where they were exposed to these flavors and we had quite a long process because not all these flavors that I was using were available year-round. I was making essential oils and keeping this, and that, and the other. And then I had a bottle with a bunch of flavors and mixes and stuff like that. So I wasn’t getting anyone particularly going with me all the time. I tried to go with different people. People in restaurants, people in bars, people I was staying with, all these locals. And then, obviously, I’d take samples with me outside of the area and ask people if they liked it or not, if it sounded interesting. That was a continuous process.

That was actually the most fun part of the project because I get a kick out of watching people try something for the first time, and I know you tried it for the first time. So you kind of get sort of like, “What is this and what’s it remind me of?” I enjoy that aspect very much. 

Saliga: Actually, my parents were in town recently, and my parents do not drink, but I had my dad smell it and he became curious, and I was like, “You need to try a sip of this.” We were at Amelia’s having dinner and he’s like, “That’s really good. That’s really smooth. I wouldn’t expect that.”

Gomez: Thanks for sharing that. It’s always nice when people think that. The smooth part is the thing that we’re most proud of at the distillery. We take our time with the process. Other distillers when I tell them, “

I added a third distillation and built my own pot just so I can do that.” Some of them look at me and say, “Oh, but you know that you can buy thickening agents, right?” And I’m going, “Yeah. But my rule is only to use stuff that I have which is natural, locally sourced. I can’t make that claim if I do that.” 

Saliga: How do you prefer to drink TRÄ•KÁL, neat or in a cocktail? If say, it’s the end of a workweek and you’re ready to unwind. 

Gomez: I like every cocktail. I’m big fan of a Paloma. I like simple things with TRÄ•KÁL because I think the liquid’s complex enough. So with tonic or a mojito, it’s fine. I think with a negroni it’s fantastic. I’ve always been a fan of negronis. Always, always, always.

I also mess around with it and I put red wine in it. Like in Chile we use Carménère. So it’s Campari, Carménère, and TRÄ•KÁL. It’s not a negroni. And you know what? Andrew, I wouldn’t even say a negroni with TRÄ•KÁL is a negroni. For me, with a negroni, you got to be respectful of the recipe. Because when you use bourbon instead of gin it’s a boulevardier, which is fine. It’s a new thing. So I don’t say TRÄ•KÁL negroni so much. We say it in the cocktail list [PDF] because that’s what we’re doing but down here we call it a Patagonico, like a Patagonian liquor.

Saliga: Interesting. 

Gomez: And I think it’s going to evolve in that way. I don’t tell people what to drink or what they should call it, I’m not that presumptuous. But I’m watching the whole thing evolve. The more popular that particular cocktail with TRÄ•KÁL, the more people are going to start calling it Patagonico. Some people have even called it a meridionale, which in Italian means, “from the south,” which is kind of a cool thing. 

Saliga: Going back to what you were saying about choosing a name, it’s like naming a child and your child is an adult now. She’s out in the world, and you’re watching to see if she’s going to live up to her name, and she’s forging her own path and you welcome that. You’re just seeing the ways that she grows on her own and how she integrates into other people’s bar programs. That’s interesting.

Gomez: You have to be very gentle with a child, right? I don’t have any kids but I’ve been with my brother and some of my friends, dear friends. I’ve always known that with a child you have to be very gentle, and whenever you have a baby, I suppose it’s best to be that way.

Saliga: Was there a lot of anxiety when TRÄ•KÁL first started shipping to the US and seeing how it would be received?

Gomez: There’s been anxiety from the beginning because we’re no longer a startup, but we’re still a very young company and we don’t know how many months away we are from this all staying alive, or even growing up.

I think things are going very well, but you just don’t know. It was a big bet to send stuff to the US of course, but we also thought that there would people who try it and enjoy it. It’s the most competitive and the most interesting spirits market in the world. The American consumer is more open than anyone else. They’re more creative in it’s presentation and its use in the cocktail scene, especially. It’s just a wonderful playground where people are always changing, there’s tendencies, there’s new stuff coming online. It really is fantastic. So we thought, “Okay. Sure it’s the biggest and most daunting place, but if we’re smart about it and we present in the right way it’s also the place where we think it’s going to get accepted, understood easiest.” 

Chile was a tough proposition because, particularly Chile, compared to other South American markets, it’s a very conservative drinks market. It’s wine, it’s beer, and pisco, and pisco’s really only drunk two ways– in a sour or with Coca-Cola. It’s not even really used much in cocktail making. Cocktails in Chile for a long time were just left to the 5-star hotels with the international tourists. It’s different now, but for the longest time, it was like that. I think that the Chilean cocktail revolution started five, seven years ago, I wouldn’t even say 10 years ago. Now it’s fantastic because they have some of the best bartenders in all of South America. Chile’s come a hell of a long way and Chilean bartenders are doing cool things because there’s so many flavors here which are unique. I think they have a bit of an advantage. I think only the Brazilians have as much of a palette to play with as the Chileans.

I, honestly, do think that the US is our natural home away from home for this product and for any distiller who wants to make a change. I mean, for some reason people have been going to America, to migrate, for many years. It’s got that frontier spirit for the world. 

We’re starting in Europe now. Those are different challenges. The European market is far more localized in its preferences. People have their regional preferences. I mean, but you can’t really argue with them. I mean, think about you could write a book about the spirits that each country has, the Spanish, Italians, French, Scandinavians, Austrians, the Germans, the Brits. I mean, each one of them has an incredible contribution. The British Isles with their gins and their whiskeys, and the Spanish with their orujos and sherries and all the other jazz. And the French, well, the French know more than anyone what to do with herbs. Like the Austrians, or the Germans, or the Italians. Italians, too, I mean, you can’t point a finger at them.

All I can say is that these markets are tougher to go to because the consumer in those markets is an expert in what they have been drinking all their lives. So when something comes in from outside it’s a bit too exotic, maybe, for them. Whereas, in the US, apart from a great native distilling tradition, it also has a huge market, which is super cool and open-minded and people, bartenders, who are not constrained by customs or traditions about how to do it. Everyone wants to make their own stand. 

Saliga: As far as availability –

Gomez: Anywhere in the US, man. Oh my God, dude, I’ve been traveling around all over the US with TRÄ•KÁL, the drinks that I tried in Oklahoma, come on, rock and roll. Oklahoma… a lot of the south is doing great cocktails, seriously. Seriously good cocktails. I think the hospitality thing is a nice trait about the southerner.

Saliga: Yes, I think that’s the thing that I hope bars across the US are coming back to, because we had the cocktail boom and it became about the art and the science, and it kind of got out of control and everyone’s coming back to the classics and the hospitality aspect. You can get a great drink, but if the service is bad, if bartenders are cold and not personable, that’s as much as part of the experience as the drink is itself, in my opinion.

Gomez: Absolutely, and you know what? It’s that conversation. Create a dialogue between the bartender and the customer, where you’re giving the customer what they want, and you’re understanding it because you’re talking to them and they’re talking to you back, I think that’s what really, really, really cool. I mean, and it’s the only place in the world I know where dealer’s choice is a thing. Seriously!

Saliga: That’s funny. I never thought about that.

Gomez: Try to do that in Italy and they’ll go, “What? What is this crazy man? Does he not know that here we make the best Americano that a man could drink? He’s an American and he’s telling me I can choose what he drinks?” It’s funny how cultures are.

Saliga: As far as your future release, you’re talking about a barrel-aged version of TRÄ•KÁL, is there a time table on that? 

Gomez: Well, how long is a piece of string? You know? Andrew, I mean, it has to be right. I’m working on it and I’m pretty happy with the way it’s evolving. Any distiller will tell you that it’s a matter of getting approval, working on labeling, the bottling, this, that and the other. It can happen quickly, or it can take a little longer.

I’m working liqueurs as well, and I’m working on vermouths. There’s a whole bunch of different flavors that are unique here, which I think deserve to get out there.

Saliga: I would love some Patagonian vermouth. Exploring that world of vermouth and all the different styles from different regions, there’s a lot to it.

Gomez: It’s wonderful. Great product and super versatile, too. I like to think that our vermouth is going to be very much our thing from the ends of the earth, where there are some winemakers locally. So I want to use them. I’m working on these things. I know what I want to do with their wines. I need to still work out the details because I’m not going to be planting grapes.

Saliga: Sebastian is there anything I missed or anything you want to add?

Gomez: Oh, mate listen, it was great to talk to you and meet you. I’m grateful every day for what’s going on with this thing because I knew it’d be interesting, but I didn’t know if it was going to be any good, and now people are telling me it’s good, things are getting interesting. 

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Recipes

TRÄ•KÁL lends itself to use in a range of cocktails, but my first suggestion is to try it neat. Personally, I’ll even pour it in a Glencairn glass and not mess with a cocktail. If you’re looking for substitutions, try it in recipes in the place of gin. The flavor profile is sweet and very herbal, but not really floral, so supporting ingredients like vermouths and herbal liqueurs like Chartreuse play well. 

TRÄ•KÁL has their own cocktail recipe book that has some riffs on classics. You can download it here. Below are two cocktails from their book.

Cheers! 

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Additional Resources

• TRÄ•KÁL – Official Site
• TRÄ•KÁL Instagram
• TRÄ•KÁL Facebook
• TRÄ•KÁL Cocktail Guide [PDF Download]
• Glencairn Glass 2-Pack
• Glencairn Glass 6-Pack
  
• Fever-Tree Ginger Beer
• Q Mixers Ginger Beer