By Laura Rancie.
Quentin Brival 's history is steeped in Caribbean culture from where he grew up on the small island of French-speaking Martinique. At only age 32, Quentin has absolutely changed the way in which Australia will forever talk about rum. What's fascinating is the journey of how he got here.
Currently, he is the head distiller at HUSK, creating innovative rums and gins and thriving off the sugar cane fields surrounding the farm.
Currently, he is the head distiller at HUSK, creating innovative rums and gins and thriving off the sugar cane fields surrounding the farm.
Join us for part one of our Quentin series, where we dive deep into the rum and gin culture. In this article we learn more about Quentin's idyllic upbringing on a small island, graduating in engineering through to initial thoughts of arriving in Australia and the moment he fell in love with making rum. We present to you ... Quentin Brival. Enjoy!
Quentin, can you describe to AGFG readers about life before becoming head distiller at HUSK, because I believe you have had some adventures at such a young age too.
Life certainly is a journey and you end up places you didn’t think you’d see and do things you didn’t think you’d get a chance to do and it’s great! I have an engineering background and none of the jobs I’ve done before HUSK had anything to do with alcohol. It’s something I fell into. That’s probably typical of most distillers, it’s not what they thought they would do with their life, but we all start with a very strong passion for spirits.
For me, I guess it all started when I moved to Australia 9 years ago. I’m from Martinique in the Caribbean where there is rich history and culture around rum. Rum has always been part of my culture and something I always really liked. Where I come from it’s not just a drink but an entire culture associated with it. It’s about how we drink it, make it, the smell, the aesthetics of a distillery that spends half a year making it. All that resonates with me, a lot.
Travelling the world I could always find the rums that I liked. I would buy a bottle and that was my connection with home. But in Australia, unfortunately, the culture wasn’t established yet. We are so far away and many good rums that I knew hadn’t made their way to Australia.
Things are different now, and there are a lot of really good rums and even rums that are made here, like HUSK. But back then I couldn’t find that and I felt like I was losing a connection with the Caribbean; if I couldn’t find a rum I liked, maybe I should try and make my own. After some research and because of my engineering background, I made rum on a very small backyard scale. Then I got more and more into it, more and more interested in learning about the process and what does and doesn’t make a good rum until it became so obvious that that’s what I wanted to do.
I wanted to work in nature and with natural products and give people something they could enjoy. That was the same time I heard about HUSK - a distillery that makes the same types of rum from my home in Martinique and I thought, well I need to meet this Paul Messenger. We both shared a vision of what we wanted to do, a common passion for the rum. We joined forces and I officially started in 2017 and helped build HUSK from then on.
What was it like growing up in Martinique, a rugged Caribbean island in what is referred to as ‘les Antilles' in the Caribbean?
I have to say it was very nice and I often think about it. I was blessed in this part of my life. Because it is a pretty wealthy island there is a high quality of life, great education, very good standards of living and access to everything.
There are incredible beaches and a slower pace of life than the rest of the world so a great place to grow up. The island is very small, so you are limited in terms of career opportunities but being French-speaking it’s very easy to then move anywhere in the rest of the world.
At what point did you realise the path you thought you were on, might end up looking different? At what point did you think ‘hmm...I might really love to get into rum’.
I think it's been a journey. I think the initial seed planted was visiting my winemaker cousin in Canada. Back then I had no idea about making spirits or wine or beer. One day he took me to his work. I remember at probably age 19, just loving that concept of going into the vineyard looking at the grapes and then taking that back to the winery and making these beautiful wines.
When I started 10 years later to get into rum more, I did some research and tried to understand why a rum tastes good. Why this rum tastes different to that rum.That’s when I started the second part of my journey; understanding and trying to work with sugar cane, I had flashbacks to those two weeks that I had spent with my cousin making wine. I realised I was as passionate now as I was back then and that I could incorporate my engineering knowledge, science background and skills that I had acquired over the years, I knew it could help me create a better product.
I realised that crafting spirits is a little bit of a mix of art and science.There are things that are very science-driven. There are parameters to be respected, but also like in cooking, where you test and use your palate, there are things that work and you don't really know why, but they just do, so slowly you make a better and better product.
That combination of art, science and hard skills learned through engineering and more sort of abstract skills through sensory tastings, all of that created a whole. Something better. I thought, well this is interesting. I love it. I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing this!
This was the first in a series of articles about Quentin Brival, head distiller at HUSK. Stay tuned for the next time we talk with Quentin on the differences between rum and rhum agricole, the sugar cane landscape of Australia and rum pairing.
