Age Statements - guide or gullible?
There are certain minimum requirements you need to meet to call a spirit scotch whisky, one of which is that it must be aged for a minimum of 3 years (in oak, if we're being technical, and in Scotland if we're being obvious). After that, you can release it as whisky and see what the market makes of it.
3 years old is generally considered a bit young for whisky (Italy likes young whiskies - I blame the grappa) and most malts are usually released with an age statement of at least 10 years. All well and good - distilleries have their core bottlings at a range of age statements and are able to produce those at consistent qualities. There will be specials released at other ages because it's just such a high quality spirit it would be silly to keep it longer and lose whatever makes it magical, but those are just that - specials.
Age statements are not a sliding scale of increases in quality! Older does not necessarily = better. Older does usually = much more expensive. Spirit evaporates through the barrel over time (the famous "angel's share" - heaven must smell fantastic!) so there's less in the barrel the older it gets and older barrels have obviously taken up space without generating revenue for a very long time.
Every spirit is different, as is every drinker, but there will come a point in the ageing process where the wood flavours completely overwhelm the whisky. I think most whiskies reach that stage shortly after 21 years. It's got to be a pretty extraordinary whisky to last beyond that age without being swamped by the wood. Interestingly, the Islay malts (tasting notes on some of those coming soon, I promise!) don't stand up to ageing as well as you'd think. They rely on their smoke flavours to define their character and those flavours are the most susceptible to time. I haven't had much super-aged whisky but the ones that have kept the most character tend to be those with cooked fruit notes and big toffee bite. The vanilla and tannins from the oak sit quite happily alongside those flavours and take much longer to swamp them.
Of the malts I enjoy (which, to be fair, is most of them) the majority are at their very best between 15 and 20 years old. If I find a whisky I enjoy at the youngest age it's bottled at, I'll probably like it even more once it reaches that age range. Experimentation at a good bar or with miniatures (harder to find than a good bar) is where the fun begins! Take notes, your memory will get fuzzy soon...
Get out there and start dropping those Christmas hints!
