Whisky.

1} Bunkum.
Simple fact, the art of ageing whisky is that whilst it stays in the wooden barrel, it absorbs flavour from the wood.
Therefore, a whisky stored in a second hand port barrel will take on some of the flabvours of that port as well as characteristics of the type of wood the barrel was made out of.

Therefore, once it is sealed in a bottle, that process halts....

4} complete woolarbra wonga of the highest order.

DO NOT let the wine snobs persuade you any different, do not let them tell you what YOU like.

Look at the two answers above.

Designed...

So an old Port barrel will impart taste, AND, Colour...
They dont remove all traces of port from that barrel, in truth, they encourage that remains to be left as it.
Some will even go as far as to chipping up old barrels to steep the new whisky into to impart a slight taste change into their whisky..
Not to "fool" anyone, but to create a better taste.

So on to how you can tell.
Yeah, an aged whisky will be a smoother ride, it wont be a raw strangle hold on the back of your throat, it will impart separate tastes that only come with an aged product.
But...
If all you have ever drunk is for instance an American blended whiskEy, how the hell are you supposed to know the difference between a 15y old Speyside and a 50 yr old Glen-{something}?.


On to testing of myths here... and this one is something I cant predict.

If I put a 15yr old and a 30 yr old and a 50 yr old of the same brand same initial recipe in front of you, you should be able to taste the difference, but can you tell which is which?.

I propose a blind tasting,
[And I also propose if your going to do it properly, you may need the assistance of ONLY the inhabitants of this board^[1] who will be able to give you an honest answer..]
Or it must be a series of random people of all walks of life, as long as they do not specialise in whisky trade alone here.

I suggest a group of people be given a series of say half a dozen different whisky's preferably single malt,
Make that a range of cheep to expensive brands, but keep it affordable to the working man, we dont need anything more than a weeks wages per bottle here.

Make those bottles of an age range, of 5yr, 15yr, and 50yr aged, and asked to rate them in order of preference over each other of the same brand, being told they may be differencing in the blends, but not knowing that there is any age difference.

Then rate them in order of preference of the total of all the whiskies on test

Only at that point, AFTER testing, are any test subjects to be told that some of it was aged more than others.

Will they rate the 50yr as higher than the 5 yrs, will they rate all the 50yrs at the top of their preferences, or will they rate a 5yr of one brand over they 15 yrs or even 50 yrs of others.




For me, I predict total randomness.

I also ask that at this point, you request from each, what level of experience each of them has with whisky, and then take those that may have had more than just a passing interest and see if their results reflect that.

I then suggest you take the same test, Blind, with a group of those who should know better, Sommeliers, [wine experts} and perhaps whisky experts, and other people in the trade, and see if they are as random as the previous.

In truth, you would expect more structured results, in that they should be able to rate all of the brands in order of age.
And then in the total results, they should have rated all of the higher aged above all of the lower aged.

In Truth, you would expect some of the experts to predict each bottle before being told eh?..
I suggest that I may be able to spot a region, as in, if I cant at lest spot Tallisker, I am sorely missing, but if I cant spot a glen{somethig} against a highlands against a lowlands against an island ?.. I should manage that, but, then, I used to drink a LOT of whisky in the past.

Maybe even chuck a Jack Daniels bottle in as a "Joker", in that its quality, but can they spot an American against the otherwise predominantly Scottish Scotch.?..
BTW, I will spot that one myself, because JD is a good swilling whisky that I would use as a goto in the kitchen if I just tasted something awful and needed to clean my mouth out?.
You dont waste Tallisker in that way.

Repeat this again, the next day, with another product, say Brandy, is 5-star "High quality" aged brandy better than another by taste, or is it just that we are told it is, and we believe the hype?.

I suggest the day between tests because even though we are testing in small quantities, we dont want the test subjects completely legless do we?.




^{[1] See... I am trying to promote the board here, and any event that involves us, MUST be one with a good malt ...}

Along similar lines, John Cleese of Monty Python once produced a video about wine that I highly recommend to anyone interested in the subject: "Wine for the Confused".

In the video, he showed a blind tasting at his home, at a party he threw for his friends. Some knew wine, some did not.

The wines he tested ranged from $100+ vintages to "Two Buck Chuck".

The final results were all over the map. Some persons lined up exactly with price vs. quality, some were opposite, and some were random.

The conclusion drawn was essentially "Don't let anyone tell you your palate. If it tastes good to you, then it's good wine. If not, don't waste your money on a label or price."

After all, wine (and whiskey, whisky, or whatever other name you want to call it) is designed purely for your pleasure. Why deny yourself that just because of someone else's opinion?