Toast to My Own Whiskey — A Journey to Find My Own Whiskey
Toast to my own whiskey — A Journey to Find My Own Whiskey
Not because BTS enjoys it, not because it appeared in the film ‘Decision to Leave,’ but the journey of Boyeonjeong, a whiskey lab searching for the taste one truly loves.
Interviewer Parc Jinmyoung
Interviewee Jeong Boyeon (CEO of Jeong Boyeon Company)
Boyeonjeong, a whiskey lab, sits nestled among machine repair shops. Before settling on its location, Jeong Boyeon, the head of Boyeonjeong, said she deliberately went looking for an area full of such workshops. “I thought the owners looked so cool, cigarettes in their mouths from early morning, absorbed in their work.” Drawn to a space divided into a ground floor and an attic, she set up shop in its current location in Cheongpa-dong. “I decorated the first floor imagining London in 2070, and the attic imagining Tokyo in 2070.” She filled Boyeonjeong with objects and furniture she’d want to keep until she becomes a grandmother. Everything except the refrigerator and sink is secondhand. The turntable and speakers in the attic were passed down from her father.
When I met Jeong Boyeon at Boyeonjeong, she played music through the turntable and speakers that carry the memory of her father’s younger days. Sitting on the tatami mats in the attic, she told me to lean back against the wall. Jazz flowed out thick as a long-aged whiskey, and the vibration of a subway passing just behind the building reached my body. Here is the conversation I had with Jeong Boyeon in this drinker’s hideaway, where you can’t help but crave a sharp glass of whiskey.
How have you been lately?
Besides Boyeonjeong’s own programs, I’ve been doing brand and program planning and marketing work proposed by outside clients. Most recently, I’ve been preparing a photo exhibition and book talk in Yeonnam-dong, Seoul, to celebrate the publication of writer Lee Jieun’s 1 ‘The Artisan’s Atelier.’ The response has been better than expected, so we opened an additional session, and that sold out quickly too — I’m thrilled. It’s all thanks to the writer’s fans.
I heard you republished writer Lee Jieun’s 2007 book, ‘Ateliers of European Artisans.’
That’s right. After ‘Ateliers of European Artisans’ went out of print, it used to sell for high prices at secondhand bookstores. This time it’s been republished through Moyosa Publishing, and both the editor-in-chief and the writer told me they practically rewrote it from scratch. It’s rare for a book that’s gone out of print to be revived, so I suppose good content really does stand the test of time.
Whiskey and vintage items, which Boyeonjeong deals in, are also a kind of timeless value. I’m curious how you got into this field.
I was originally a marketer at an e-commerce platform, mainly handling fashion and beauty products. Fashion is one of the fastest-moving industries in terms of trends. Since a marketer’s role is to drive consumer purchases, I found myself saying things like ‘you should buy this because it’s trendy’ or ‘you should buy this because of this feature,’ and that created some inner conflict. I believe that taste is formed through consumption based on each person’s own values. I started thinking that, given the chance, I wanted to talk about products worth keeping for a long time — things that get better the more you revisit them. I focused on developing an eye that could read trends while also selecting stories with lasting value within them. That’s how I ended up doing work that connects values that don’t change over time with content.
1 Written by Lee Jieun, who studied 18th-century French art history, this book tells the stories of twelve French artisans, ranging from harpsichord makers to watch movement craftsmen.
What kinds of programs does Boyeonjeong run?
Mostly classes and exhibitions centered around whiskey. They span fields you can enjoy alongside whiskey, such as photography, painting, and music. Since Boyeonjeong can only accommodate up to eight people, when a program gets an especially strong response, we sometimes expand it into a larger outside venue. For instance, last summer we planned a program called ‘Listening to Scent,’ where guests listened to jazz while tasting whiskeys that matched the theme. It felt like a shame to keep it limited to Boyeonjeong, so we hosted a larger version at a café and restaurant with a good sound system, welcoming more guests.
Personally, ‘Bourbon and Hats: An American Road Trip Story’ left a strong impression on me.
The person behind that story is the owner of a bar in Sinchon that I used to frequent. He was a young man who offered whiskey at reasonable prices to beginners while sharing all kinds of stories. After closing his bar, he went on a 53-day trip across America, and when he came back, he started running whiskey classes paired with stories from his travels. I thought it would be such a waste to let that end there, so I proposed an exhibition and class. To bring the moments he experienced to life in a more vivid and multidimensional way, we exhibited footage and photos shot with a 360 camera, along with hats he bought during his trip across America. We also introduced four distilleries he visited and held a class where guests could taste each whiskey.
I’m preparing another exhibition for around May. There’s a Korean designer who used to take street snap photos in Tokyo, Japan. After returning to Korea, she said she lost interest in her camera, so we decided to put together an exhibition together. I genuinely love her photos — they’re natural, with a tone unlike anything I’ve seen before.
What’s the project that has stayed with you the most?
Last November, I held an exhibition called ‘Cheers’ with artist Han Chayeon, who does drawing while making ceramics. We curated and exhibited the sake cups she made along with her drawings. Han Chayeon already has a solid fan base, so the response was enthusiastic. The smoky feeling in her drawings pairs so well with whiskey. I even bought one of the paintings featured in the exhibition myself.
Boyeonjeong has no sign and is in a spot that’s hard to stumble upon by chance. Was that intentional?
I hope that only people who are genuinely interested in the exhibitions or classes will come. Reservations for Boyeonjeong programs are also limited to one seat per person. I think it’s best if people decide for themselves what content they consume.
The space is named ‘Boyeonjeong’ and the company is called ‘Jeong Boyeon Company’ — you’ve put your own name front and center. That takes confidence.
Of course, it can feel like a lot of pressure sometimes (laughs). Since I used to work within a company, the public didn’t really know who I was as a person. When I went independent, I needed a way to market both myself as an individual and the work I do at the same time. When you run a small business, the marketing budget is naturally limited. So I decided to solve both problems at once by using my real name for both the space and the company.
Actually, the ‘jeong (亭)’ in Boyeonjeong is a different character from my surname, Jeong (丁). The character 亭 carries two meanings. When it refers to the smallest unit of a house, I wanted to explore the power held within everyday domestic life. When it refers to a resting place by the water, it carries the meaning of introducing drinks like whiskey, wine, or tea, along with the sense of getting tipsy (on whiskey) and letting time drift by. I branded it this way so that the meaning of the space and my own meaning could blend together.
How would you describe the first moment you encountered whiskey?
I’ve always loved scents and alcohol. After working late, I used to sit alone at a bar sometimes and drink. One day, the bartender introduced me to a whiskey. As he handed it to me, he told me which writer had loved that particular whiskey, why it had that particular aroma, and which book it had appeared in — the whole story behind it. The air in the bar was a little cold that night, but as the whiskey spread through my body and through the space, it felt like all my senses opened up.
After that, I started studying whiskey in earnest with friends who also loved drinking. Back then, there was only a single book about whiskey in Korea (‘Whiskey Notebook’ by Sung Joongyong), so I was passionate enough to order original foreign-language books from Amazon and read them. In 2019, with all that knowledge and experience built up, I published a book called ‘Whiskey, at the End of the Day,’ and this June, my second book, ‘Whiskey, at the End of the Journey,’ is set to be released. I’m in the middle of finishing the manuscript, and honestly, I’m feeling quite a bit of pressure since it’s not going as fast as I’d hoped (laughs).
I heard you recently went on a whiskey distillery tour in Australia.
Actually, I went on that trip to study a bit more about the mechanics of how wine ages in oak barrels and the changes that occur during that process. Since I work with whiskey so much, I tend to be used to spirits with a strong oak influence. When I do blind wine tastings, I often find that the wines I think taste best turn out to be from New World producers like Australia, New Zealand, or the United States. So to learn more about wine, I toured wineries in South Australia. On the day before I flew home, when I was back in Melbourne, I indulged myself and also visited Starward, the distillery that's all the rage these days.
What's the appeal of Australian whiskey?
Usually, countries that are just starting to make whiskey tend to follow Scotland's traditional methods. But Australia has such a developed food and beverage industry that producers often collaborate with experts from other fields — beer, wine, coffee, and so on. Thanks to that, Australian whiskey has a novel range of flavors and a strong sense of individuality. On top of that, Australia has a distribution system that lets producers source every ingredient needed for whiskey-making locally within a single day. In fact, even Scotch whisky isn't always made entirely from barley grown in Scotland.
And these days, wine cask-aged whiskey is very popular. Since good oak wine barrels are everywhere in Australia, it's easy for producers to take advantage of high-quality barrels — that's another advantage. There are still areas that need further development, but I found it really impressive how they're leading the whiskey market by leveraging their own strengths. It felt almost like watching a smart startup in action.
Alcohol produces carbon dioxide as it ferments. Carbon emissions are a big issue these days — what kind of efforts are the distilleries you've visited making?
With the exception of the United States, countries that produce whiskey tend to reuse oak barrels that previously held wine or whiskey. In the U.S., there's a law requiring that only new oak barrels be used to make bourbon or whiskey. Scotland and Australia have no such law, so they reuse barrels that were originally used in the U.S. Barrels are typically reused up to four times, and the whiskey's flavor changes depending on how many times the barrel has been used — that number is even noted on the whiskey label. Barrels that have been used four times are either discarded or sent to furniture companies to be recycled again. Here's a fun fact: if you take part in ‘The Dramathon,’ a running race held every October in Scotland, you get a medal made from an oak barrel. The Dramathon starts at the Glenfarclas distillery, passes through major distilleries, and finishes at the Glenfiddich distillery2 — it's a marathon where you race between them. I wanted to take part last year, but it was already sold out, so I had to settle for covering it as a reporter. I'm going to try again this year (laughs).
Whenever environmental issues come up, companies that sell alcohol or tobacco tend to become targets of strict regulation — after all, it's a business that's inherently harmful to the human body. Because of this, these companies have long been working to improve their environmental practices. Glengoyne's distillery, located in a wild wetland, started a project to purify its liquid waste. The water passes through twelve ponds and reed beds in the wetland before safely rejoining the river. They're also working toward a sustainable future by using 100 percent wind and solar energy. Glenfiddich turns its distillation waste into bioethanol, which is used as fuel for transport trucks throughout Scotland.
Beyond that, the era of flashy materials and elaborate designs for whiskey packaging is a thing of the past. Most of the whiskey packaging we see today is made from recyclable paper.
Tell us how beginners can enjoy whiskey without too much difficulty.
A lot of people seem to think whiskey is intimidating because of its high alcohol content. But actually, whiskey is a drink meant to be enjoyed for its aroma, so you don't really notice the proof as much as you'd expect. It's such an appealing spirit because you can enjoy such a wide range of aromas depending on the producer, distillery, and vintage. When I just want to enjoy the aroma of a whiskey, I'll pour it into a glass, set it on a stand, and read a book or listen to music. It's a pleasure to breathe in the scent as it slowly fills the room, like a calming diffuser. Even if you're not a big drinker, if you love a good scent, you'll fall for whiskey's charm in no time.
2 There are four races in total: the Full Dram (about 42 kilometers), the Half Dram (about 21 kilometers), the Wee Dram (about 10 kilometers), and the Relay (teams of four, about 10 kilometers). Here, ‘dram’ refers to a glass of whiskey.