FACING (and winning) THE WHISKEY AGE CHALLENGE
By Steve Kirwan
How can an infant outperform a fully developed adult? That’s the challenge faced by American single-malt whiskey producers, one they are meeting head-on with style and conviction! As a genre, American single malts have been around for 23 years. Steve McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt started a revolution in 1997, one that hundreds more have joined over the ensuing years. But what is that compared to 1000 years for Irish whiskeys, and 800 for Scotch?
It’s not that American malts aren’t competing. Au contraire! Individual distilleries have done quite nicely, thank you, with many stunning expressions released and more underway. Yet with all their historical knowledge perfected by technical skill, they’ve not found a way to overcome that basic fact of existence- time. We are just starting to see releases of age-statement American malts. The distilleries have been forced by economic pressures to release their whiskeys quickly. Cash flow is king, and without sales, there’s no cash flowing. Many distilleries have side-stepped Father Time a bit due to rapid aging from heat. Whiskey matures faster here than in Scotland’s or Ireland’s chilly sea-influenced climate. Yet even with that (slight) advantage, maturation has taken second-seat to the core characteristics of the barley, malting manipulations, and casking materials.
So, as the industry trucks on, distilleries squirrel away a cask here and a barrel there, waiting for the marching of time to yield, well, time. So, until enough has passed to allow American single malt producers to understand how “real” aging impacts their precious liquids, we’ll have to wait. Fortunately, there are more than enough quality offerings to keep us busy for a bit.
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