Man Says He Can Make 20-Year-Old Rum in 6 Days
wired.com
wired.com
http://www.norvig.com/speech.html
"Before I answer that, let me return for the moment to Dewey Decimal 663: beverage technology. It turns out that in my very first professional job, as an intern thirty years ago, I had a colleague, a chemist, who had worked in beverage technology. The summer before he had been an intern and was given the task of figuring out if there was a particular chemical that gave whisky the distinctive taste of being aged in an oak cask. The company figured if they could isolate the chemical maybe they could just mix it in, and skip five or ten years of aging. So my friend went into the lab and isolated what he thought might be the right compound. He ordered a small vial from a chemical supply company (remember, this was before online shopping and email, so they had to actually write words on paper) and mixed up a batch. It tasted pretty good. (Why can't we computer scientists get research projects that involve consuming alcohol?) My friend was duly congratulated, and he wrote to the chemical supply company and asked for a 55 gallon drum of the stuff. They wrote back, saying "we regret that we can not fill your order because we are currently low on stock and, as I'm sure you know, to produce this chemical we need to age it in oak casks for five years."
Novig is not a chemist, and the recollection is 30 years old. It could be that he misremembered the story, or the original chemist was telling him a tall tale. Instead, this sounds like a just-so story that people tell to impart truthiness.
To be more concrete, what's the compound? As this Wired piece says:
> Much as it sounds, extraction involves the pulling of new chemicals from the oak, including phenol, benzoic acid, and vanillin. When you taste notes of sawed wood, burnt toast, smoke, or vanilla in a whiskey, it’s largely due to extraction of these compounds from the barrel, literally aldehydes and phenols leaching into your drink
Quoting now from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-new-... :
> He says the company’s chemists have found about 300 different compounds, and have identified some 200 of them. Once all elements are ascertained and understood, some fear it may be a short step to producing synthetic aged bourbon. “You could go to the lab and say, ‘I’m going to take one part per billion of this and one part per billion of this and three parts per billion of that, I’m going to put it all in a test tube, and I’m going to make the perfect bourbon based on our research,’ ” says Brown. He hastens to add, “I don’t think we’ll ever be looking to make a synthetic bourbon.”
Cognac is moving in a different direction: increasing the age required of the youngest au-de-vies for VSOP and XO characterisation. As rum is generally blended, like Cognac - that's probably a better analogy than single malt whisky. This why for example bottles of the same series of Cognac, or brand rums like Havana Club 7 anos can taste (almost) the same even when produced from different raw stocks - they are blended to meet a certain taste.
Might be something along the same lines as the brewing temperature/ timing of coffee (replace wood surface area for temperature)- hotter water extracts everything faster, but some things faster than others. A longer but colder brew will extract the hard-to-get compounds in larger relative proportion.
Just rampant speculation though.
they say as much in the first paragraph.
Oak is used in winemaking to vary the color, flavor, tannin profile and texture of wine. It can be introduced in the form of a barrel during the fermentation or aging periods, or as free-floating chips or staves added to wine fermented in a vessel like stainless steel.
For the most part people like high age counts for the same reason they want high megapixel counts, it is a comparable number that gives them at least the illusion of control, and rational differentiation.
1: http://anheuser-busch.com/index.php/our-heritage/commitment-... (agewall)
Take Japan: both Nikka and Suntory have moved to NAS (Taketsuru Pure Malt, Hibiki Harmony, etc.) because of a surge both in foreign demand for Japanese whisky (thanks to Murray who helpfully added that in his mind Scottish quality had been declining for several years after giving top ranking to Japanese names) and because Suntory (I think) tried to resurrect the waning appetite amongst the young Japanese for the "unfashionable, old-fashioned" brown spirit by launching advertising campaigns centered on highballs. They just don't have enough 12/17/21 year old barrels to meet demand and try to deflect some onto the NAS blends (and also skim some margin off the wave of popularity). I don't know what Laphroaig is doing, but as a long term drinker of the 18 I've also noticed a steady drop in quality (shorter finish, less complexity). And of course most of the major houses now add caramel to their base offering and often in more expensive older ones too...
Meanwhile, Karuisawa distillery, which had to close some years ago (like Port Ellen) for economic reasons and due to the lack of interest in whisky at the time, is now seeing its last bottles go for thousands - if you can find them anywhere. Hibiki 17 is out of stock at all Japanese duty frees and - as of April - is no longer sold at Haneda airport. You're seeing a lot of smaller names come into existence immediately at Scottish level prices - Ichiro/Chichibu (formerly Hanyu), Mars, Fuji to name three - and they are also often out of stock. (If you're interested in the subject, the Nonjatta blog is phenomenal.)
The rum industry is relatively untouched. Yes, there are massively marketed rums using all the tricks in the book, but if you are a fan of vintage rhum agricole (e.g. La Favorite La Flibuste or Privilege, 35 year old rhum agricole, still hand bottled and waxed, for 100-120 EUR!) or limited editions from Italian houses finding interesting barrels, you'll pay a lot less than for the equivalent quality in malt world...
> I don't know what Laphroaig is doing, but as a long term drinker of the 18 I've also noticed a steady drop in quality (shorter finish, less complexity).
I have a similar impression of Laphroaig 10 (the only one I drink from time to time) -- but I assumed it was me getting more accustomed to more complex single malts. Perhaps not.
No question that NAS-branding has much to do with, well branding -- an steering volume sales. But I think it can/could work in favour of minor distilleries starting up (in terms of esp. single malt whisky, also "new" blends).
"Years in barrel" is a pretty silly guide anyway -- it matters a lot what the barrels have been used for before etc. At any rate I have no confidence that the industry (any industry, really) -- is going to be able to come up with branding that gives a reasonable idea to the consumer what they get for their money -- without tasting the product.
But like solid gold speaker cables, people will buy based on brand and branding, even if they might be able to make better decisions if forced to do a blind-test... (and, as they say -- if you can't tell the difference in a blind test, go for the cheaper one every time...).
Which is a good thing, because it allows distillers to be creative, adding different notes to both scent and taste. Quite a few whiskies nowadays do tell you what kind of cask they were aged in.
Bourbon and sherry have traditionally been popular choices, but wine, port, cognac and rum barrels are also being used recently.
I am not so sure. I recently tried a high quality Belgian whiskey. It was smooth like a good single malt, but just didn't taste right. There were a lot of flavors, but they were not in harmony like a good Scotch. But the Belgians haven't been doing it for long. (Maybe the fact I am Scottish biases me somewhat).
A lot of the newer distilleries have not found their balance yet (including, imh and controversial o, Kavalan and Amrut, whose extraordinary ratings I do not quite understand) and part of the reason I keep coming back to Scotland is to find that balance.
I recall there were some people out in Normandie that made a pretty good, smoked single malt, not entirely unlike a decent Islay whisky.
I meant more branding in terms of "Distilerry X, N years old".
Just as good champagne really is quite different from most others sparkling wines (although, I have a hard time accepting the idea that soil etc is as important for distilled spirits as it is for wine...).
The ones that consistently impress me are the "limited edition small run" houses like Rhum Rhum, Rum Nation, Velier and so on. The Rhum Rhum cask strength Liberation (the one with the lobster on it) is only 5 years old but (to me at least) fully justifies its very high price tag - this is what we want bottlers to do!
Whereas I remember a horizontal Islay 30+ year old tasting that left me thinking I was drinking wooded water - the price tags were purely a function of supply (none) and demand (there's a sort of vicious circle whereby the rarity makes the price go up, turning it into a Veblen good amongst wealthy non-amateurs). For the price of the night, I could have had a couple bottles of legendary Veliers...
Regarding buying without tasting, I'm done with that - generally I get people I trust (such as Stephane M. at la Maison du Whisky in Singapore for rum) to make some guiding recommendations, pay for a few shots and buy the best. I've had too many promising bottles left on the shelf to be used as expensive mixers, especially lately.
You're right that cognac and armagnac especially are still little known, I think because they are still very fragmented and small family businesses compared to scotch which is basically Diageo and the Japanese. A few houses (usually owned by the likes of LVMH) get away with monstruous pricing thanks to their extensive DFS exposure, but if you browse the Cognatheque (particularly the 30+ and 50+ sections) you'll find a lot of very interesting stuff at reasonable prices even including international shipping; although it might not be worth the risk of buying blind.
When it comes to single malt, my favourite so far was a Springbank Madeira wood (aged in Madeira barrels). Apparently the Madeira people didn't like them using the name in marketing and/or the barrels for whisky, so they had to stop producing it. The "normal" Sprinkbank does very little for me tastewise, but the extra fruit/sweetness from the Madeira really made it interesting. Since I've come a across a few other's aged on Barolo barrels etc that are quite good - but I've yet to find one that was as appealing to my palate. And which wasn't so expensive that it becomes silly.
In Springbank I love the Longrow CV - it's my default request in a bar with limited interesting choices because it's still relatively cheap. Very Islay-like though (a lot of peat, and probably the opposite of your sherried sweetness) which is not to everyone's taste. Haven't had it in 3 years so YMMV. I'll keep an eye out for the Madeira, although generally not a fan of port or sherry finishes (except Mortlach, whose sheer brutality is somehow enhanced by the lingering smell).
In terms of wine finish, Renegade (another Bruichladdich experiment!) used to make a series of rums finished in great wine casks - I particularly remember the Black Rock (itself legendary) finished in Petrus, and still kick myself for not buying a few bottles back then... they were really cheap! On the other hand I bought some Iwai "Chateau Mars" finish at Hasegawa last week, and that was literally all nose and nothing else, despite the glowing review from Nonjatta. Hit and miss...
I'm sure an FP nerd could extrapolate and use this to point out the importance of referential transparency
This view is almost irrelevant. 40 years ago all of this information was available through commercial chemical information providers, like CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) and ISI (Institute for Scientific Information).
Both started computerizing their search services in the 1960s. In fact, if you look at the early history you'll see that information retrieval and chemistry search were very closely coupled; several of the IR pioneers worked with CAS, and the term "information retrieval" itself was first used at a chemistry conference.
Even without computers, a good chemistry library would have had a copy of the Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry, with this information. Asimov even wrote a short story in the 1950s based on the ubiquity of 'Beilstein' in chemistry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_in_a_Name%3F .
At best, Norvig's story is a retelling of Westheimer’s Discovery: "A month in the laboratory can often save an hour in the library." Only it puts the glory on Google, as if IR were a recent advance in chemistry.
That's why I think it's a tall tale, with no basis in reality, but meant to impart the underlying truthiness that Google is a great IR engine.
And yet, it isn't. Try using Google to find information about the chemical compound under discussion. Only a chemist could do it, because the chemist knows how to convert the structure into a chemical name - Google doesn't accept chemical structures as input - and any chemist who can extract a compound from whiskey would know how to search specialized chemistry databases.
Eg https://medium.com/matter/the-drug-revolution-that-no-one-ca...
I wonder what other products could be created this way? First thing that comes to mind is quality soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.
I do know that I far prefer the taste of fresh-squeezed (and, in fact, won't buy anything that is not). But I never really knew why.
If you mean that you prefer actual juice you get by juicing an orange yourself, then sure. But "fresh-squeezed" orange juice at the supermarket is just organic synthesis without a freezing step. (Which is an important-enough distinction; freezing fruit, or its juices, denatures a lot of the nutrients.)
Related:
http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/10/01/fresh-lime-juice-wtf...
One of the prices of consistency and conveninience is often flavor.
Honestly they should just forbid using the images of fresh fruits on the cover of their fruit juice packs. That's just a gross lie compared to what the contents is made of.
I'm trying to find another source and while I can find mention of pasteurization and discussions of how concentrates from different batches are blended to maintain a consistent taste, I can't find any more information about separating chemicals or bioreactors.
Personally, I'm not really against artificial food, but you have to admit the labeling is misleading. Also, efficiently using a single source with fixed ratios of compounds in it sounds like a fun engineering problem. "How can I turn this pipe of mixed chemicals into this other pipe of mixed chemicals at lowest cost and least waste?"
>"Everything in the juice comes from the orange," she said. "One hundred percent juice is mixed with natural oils found in the peel. Nothing artificial is added."
I think you could synthesize the compounds in a lab and still get away with that statement. Barely.
Not that it matters whether the compounds are organically sourced and purified or synthesized, but they have a vested interest in making their product appear more natural and have been misleading consumers for a while.
I am tempted to paraphrase Douglas Adams: It tastes quite, but not entirely, unlike orange juice.
Cannot at all remember who told me that, but it seemed apt.
I worry some, because as a musician, I'm all too familiar with the shortcomings of digital emulations of classic sounds. They can get 98%, but that last two percent is really bothersome and weak. I hope these new whiskies aren't like that!
It won't kill the craft whiskey industry. If anything, it would make the "truly aged" whiskies even more niche and a higher luxury.
That said, we don't appreciate the exponential rate of improvement in the low end of spirits and wine.
Really makes you wonder what actual navy rum or frontier whiskey tasted like 200 years ago.
For what it's worth: what you're pitching is basically Templeton Rye (albeit for Scotch), which is also chemically "improved".
According to thewhiskeyjug.com, its median price is $17 for the Special Reserve.
In a marked note of irony, Pappy Van Winkle is oft-regarded as the best bourbon around, so people tend to consider "close enough to Pappy" as being a fantastic bourbon. In an interview once, Julian Van Winkle mentioned that he though W.L. Weller was "just about as good" as Pappy Van Winkle. Because Weller was, at the time, very inexpensive, and Pappy very much in the expensive category, there was a giant boom for Weller... so much so, that now some of the older bottles of Weller go for 4 figures. Hilariously, more than what it costs to buy a bottle of Pappy (though both are nearly impossible to find, and people do pay plenty for Pappy when they can find it.)
I suppose if you are considering only the top percentiles of whatever you're talking about, it makes more sense. If you're only looking at the 95th-100th percentiles, then 1% of total quality is actually more like a 20% change in the space you're considering. But at that the same, to arbitrarily say that only things in the top 5 percent are worth considering is, well, arbitrary.
/rant
Its actually valid when its related to something like the Pareto principle, when you are talking about which percent by one measure is important in consideration of some other measure.
Admittedly color is probably comparatively easy to fake convincingly, especially in a uniform liquid setting where the color perception is not so complex. But that it's accepted even at the expensive "purist" levels does seem like already a chink in the armor of the idea that the only right way to do it is with a fully traditional method. A fully traditional method of coloring would leave it to whatever color is picked up from the mash and barrel-aging, and I could imagine someone arguing that only in that way do the aromas/flavors/colors subtly "match" properly. But it seems not to be seen as an issue.
As a side note, do Europeans memorize what each E number is?
Plus yellow #5. Thanks to eminem.
People with allergies do remember the specific E numbers they have to watch out for.
The packaging often states what the E numbers are, either specifically or the general category (stabilizer, emulsifier, preservative, colouring, taste additive, ...).
(2001) http://www.just-drinks.com/analysis/caramel-addition-may-pro... (2011) http://www.masterofmalt.com/Blog/post/Can-you-taste-Caramel-...
It's definitely an enthusiast/purist attitude, but common enough that some distilleries now specify "natural colour". Even large whisky producers like Diego have natural colour product lines:
http://www.diageo.com/en-row/ourbrands/categories/spirits/Pa...
The actual impact of artificial colour on taste/aroma/overall experience is likely negligible, but I wanted to point out that it is an issue to some.
FWIW, I'm a bit of a rum nerd and have been super impressed by the Lost Spirits Navy and Polynesian rums. I also noticed Longitude, a newish upscale Oakland bar by a veteran Tiki bartender, was using the Navy rum in a drink, so there are at least a few folks in industry who are believers as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaVwqraUKxA&feature=youtu.be...
I found the clip! Must watch.
If laboratory-aged whiskey is, to the best of our understanding, identical to normally-aged whiskey, what are the odds that it's actually identical? Pretty low, but it's how we expand our knowledge.
Also, it often trickles down and makes low-end products way better.
all scotch is whiskey, but not all whiskey is scotch sort of thing.
he is essentially just creating hard liquor with aging characteristics as I see it. He could technically create any new name to differentiate his product and make it more marketable as the other protected names have done.
If those in the end mean the same thing, I don't know.
Friends snobbier than me say it's ok but not at the price it was originally going at, but I liked it.
But in the end these 'tricks' always produces an inferior product and are really only good for mass-produced wine/alcohol on the cheaper end.
As an aside, two things, there are some excellent aged rums out there. The complexity can be almost as good as aged whiskey and the texture/mouth-feel (don't know the proper word) can be like a 20-year+ scotch for something not aged as long.
Second, I see that he produced Absinthe in Spain which has similar thujone levels to absinthe that is legal in the u.s. USA absinthe is nothing like the real thing - it is more like drinking Pernod. In Switzerland, where Absinthe originates, the thujone level is 100x (?) what you get in the u.s. When you drink a fair amount of it it is like you have a high-contrast filter on your eyes. Further, modern absinthe is clear although I still prefer the green.
Clear absinthes lack the herbal flavor of naturally herb colored absinthes and I find to be generally inferior. You might as well be drinking ouzo.
As you note, spirits which are extremely herbal in nature are going to have natural variance between recipes as each vendor finds their own unique flavor (e.g. fernets)
They are all overproof but extremely drinkable. Even the 151-proof "Cuban Inspired" can be sipped, and its texture sensed, which is pretty unbelievable for its alcohol content (notwithstanding its age).
Anyway, all this to say this is less fake than other techniques, e.g. sugaring wine.
If you're in the Bay Area K&L and Beltramos carry various versions, all $40 or under. Worth a shot!
Old recipes (from 1899) have been recreated and measured at 4.3mg/L.
> between 0.5 mg/L and 48.3 mg/L and averaged 25.4 mg/L
via GC-MS. Interesting stuff!
Double blind proven or asserted by experts?
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/does-all-wine-t...
and the accompanying xkcd: https://xkcd.com/915/
Sorry, but this is not close to being correct. Thujone is largely left behind by the distillation process as it's a heavy compound. Tests of decades-old pre-ban absinthes gave the same results. Modern tests by GC-MS (required by the Feds for US absinthe approval) prove the same thing. The idea of heavy thujone content is largely a marketing tactic, used to hype some Euro absinthes. The quality of US absinthes is very high. There are some one hundred of them distilled in the USA, and many are based on traditional French recipes from the 1800s.
Source: I distill absinthe.
List of USA absinthes: http://realabsinthe.blogspot.com/2008/07/list-of-absinthes-a...
TTB Circular regarding absinthe: http://www.ttb.gov/industry_circulars/archives/2007/07-05.ht...