This quote I found interesting. It would seem an important ingredient in making whisky is a locale with reasonably varied weather. I wonder if anyone has tried the equivalent of putting their whisky barrels in a giant iron lung? Pushing and pulling the whisky in and out of the wood more often might speed up the aging process.
"When it opened in 2003, Tuthilltown started experimenting with accelerating the maturation of single malt, rye, and bourbon whiskeys by letting the alcohol settle in 2- to 5-gallon oak barrels, instead of the industry-standard 53- to 55-gallon oak casks, increasing the alcohol-to-barrel-surface ratio. The small barrels sped up aging significantly; we could get to market in months, instead of years,” says Tuthilltown co-owner Ralph Erenzo"
Laphroaig takes 5-year old whisky and then ages it in "quarter casks" (~80 L or 20 gallons) for several months. The result is actually pretty tasty for a relatively cheap scotch. (Warning: must like Islay's or this one will slay you). Their 10-year old bottling is a bit nicer, but almost twice the price.
It's worth noting that more years in the barrel doesn't always improve a whisky. Islay's tend to lose their famous medicinal character if aged for too long, and other scotches often just get musty. I once had a 30-year old bottling of a rye that tasted like licking a steel drum. I'm not sure what went wrong there. Unlike many other things, there isn't so much a point of diminishing returns, but rather, a point after which a whisky will start getting worse, even as the prices continue to grow exponentially.
"Bourbon made in less than a year may be financially savvy, but most bourbon experts say it falls short on taste. “I don’t think new methods are producing whiskey that is comparable,” Bryson says. “Some accelerated whiskeys don’t feel right. They feel too thin; they don’t have the proper ‘roundness.’ ”
I'd have to do a double blind taste-test to be convinced this is true. Are whisky aficionados really more accurate than wine tasters, who famously aren't good at telling what they're drinking at all? I'm certain I could tell an Islay from a Rye or a Speyside, but could I tell a 5-year-old Bourbon from an 8-year-old Bourbon made by the same distiller if they were messing about with these accelerated aging methods?
Aging issues aside, it will be interesting to see how consumer tastes evolve over the coming decades. Scotch has come on big in the last couple of decades and demand for Bourbon is also exploding. Rye (especially Canadian Rye) remains a bit of a niche drink though, but public interest seems to be picking up. Last year, Jim Murray declared the #1 new whisky in the world to be Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye, which is a good rye for the price, but nothing particularly special. There are several Canadian Rye producers that could easily produce higher end bottlings if the market demand was there, and it does seem to be developing. It would be a fine day indeed if Alberta Premium started regularly producing 20-30 year-old bottlings instead of tricking an extremely limited bottling out every 5 years.