andrewducker | (Reply)

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Quite a lot of the cost of producing Scotch is related to its age. You lose about 2% of the volume each year the Scotch is in a barrel to evaporation. That 2% by volume is proportionately more alcohol than water so the remaining whisky is less strong. This means you, when you cut the whisky at bottling to 40% ABV you can add less water and your final number of bottles is reduced. You obviously need to store the whisky which is not free. You have a time value of money effect.

The actual quality of the whisky is not necessarily enhanced by more time in a barrel. Being in a barrel removes some chemicals from the whisky spirit and adds some flavours. Generally speaking it takes harsh, unpleasant flavours out preferentially and adds interesting nice flavours preferentially. It takes more flavour out than it puts in. After a while the barrel starts to draw out flavours you want left in and put in flavours you want left out.

How long is the right amount of time to leave whisky in the barrel depends on the composition of the base whisky spirit (is it already full of raucous flavours or is it a little bland), the taste and expectation of your audience and how big the barrel is and therefore the proportion of volume of whisky to area of barrel.

If you imagine a chart, flavour intensity on the y-axis and time on the X-axis.

Base flavour of the whisky is a horizontal line across the middle of the chart.

Net Bad Things going To the wood is a curve that slopes down from T=Z at the top of the y-axis. Net Good Things Coming From the Wood is a curve that slopes up from T=0 from the bottom of the y-axis. They will form a triangular shape in the middle of your chart. This is when the whisky is at its best. This may be quite a long period or quite a short period. You might get very different flavour profiles from one end of that triangle or not much difference. All depends on the slope.

More wood is not necessarily better. If you leave a decent whisky in a barrel for 50 years what you have left is a puddle of whisky that tastes of the barrel you put it in an not much else. However, it will cost a lot, lot more than the same whisky which has been in a barrel for 10 or 20 years. Which is where the marketing flim flam comes in. I think the whisky industry is a little disengenious when it sells old whisky to punters. Age is a cost driver. It's not a quality driver of the taste. If, as a whisky seller, you want to recover the extra cost of over-aging your whisky then you have to create some other measure of quality (romance, mistaken assumptions about what aging does, snob value,).

Meanwhile, the same industry is happy to sell people like me inside knowledge about the production process that lets me bet that any whisky over a certain age (say 30) is likely to be actively worse than the same whisky bottle at 10 or 20 years.