To produce whisky, you need malt. This is the name given to the barley that is germinated to transform its starch into maltose. And France is the world leader in malted barley. The Grallet-Dupic family, which owns and operates its own cereal fields, quickly set its sights on building its own malt house. The dream became reality at the end of 2017. In December of that year, the Malterie des Hautes-Vosges produced its first quintals of malt from its own barley. The malthouse, with an annual capacity of 1,000 tonnes, is based in the nearby Vosges mountains. The road leading to the village is reminiscent of the Scottish landscape of Speyside, with its hillside forests overlooking tumultuous streams.

For Sabine and Christophe, it would have been easy to buy beer for distillation from the many local breweries. However, the couple immediately decided to equip themselves with a complete brewery (mashing, brewing and fermentation) and to hire a brewer. The malt from the Malterie des Hautes-Vosges is received and ground in Rozelieures. Reduced to coarse flour, it is infused in hot water. The sugar from the malt will diffuse all the richness of its aromas into the water by osmosis. This sugar water is then cooled.

The sugar water from the brewing process is taken to the fermentation tanks where the yeast is added to transform the sugar into alcohol. The specificity of Rozelieures is to have a fermentation in two stages:
• a first stage of fermentation at controlled temperature
• a second stage of free fermentation, not temperature-controlled, which will give the complexity and the fatness. The result is a brew (fermented wort) which is ready to be distilled.

The Rozelieures distillery is made up of two Charentais stills of 3200 l and 1600 l. Thanks to their rather squat shape, they are perfectly adapted to the production of fine, round and fat whiskies. Rozelieures whisky is produced by double distillation of malt spirits. The distillation is slow, which gives them a lot of finesse and allows them to be tasted straight from the still.

Rozelieures offers the best conditions for ageing distillates and future whiskies, in several cellars and with barrels of various origins, always of high quality. Historically, European whisky – Scottish and Irish in particular – is aged in used bourbon or sherry casks (fino, oloroso or pedro ximenez). These were the first choices of the distillery. But very quickly, Christophe Dupic, who is also a connoisseur of great wines, decided to use barrels that had contained the great wines he likes: red Burgundy (Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges) or white Burgundy (Rully), Côtes-du-Rhône (Saint-Joseph, Condrieu), Sauternes and Tokay. It also sources barrels from producers of spirits (cognac, armagnac, rum) or blended wines (port, banyuls).
Spread over 5 cellars, several thousand barrels lie dormant waiting to be bottled.

All our whiskies are bottled on site, in the heart of the distillery. The machine fills the bottles, seals them and labels them, but they must then be placed in the cases and cartons by hand. During the bottling periods, all the teams at Rozelieures are busy on the line.