In case any of you nasty whiskey drinkers want to go in on a $20k bottle.

MAGIC

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19884930

Here's your chance.

Ilriyas

I would never go in on that only because even the thought of drinking them is blasphemous.

Tushon

Ah, yes. Instead of a car, I should buy one of these bottles.

Ilriyas

Tushon said:

Ah, yes. Instead of a car, I should but one of these bottles.

That is also a consideration, my university studies would evaporate in seconds if I bought into that.

midga

I'd drink it, but I'd wait until 2028.

UPSLynx

That's crazy. I doubt I'd be able to enjoy a bottle like that myself if I could afford it. Some of those bottles survived WWII. You're drinking history at that point. Insane.

Ilriyas

UPSLynx said:

That's crazy. I doubt I'd be able to enjoy a bottle like that myself if I could afford it. Some of those bottles survived WWII. You're drinking history at that point. Insane.

Is it wrong that I read drinking history and immediately began thinking of Highlander?

midga

All things are transient. Why not be the one to find out what hundred-year-old whisky is like?

Cliff_Forster

How would one authenticate a $20,000 bottle of booze?

Tushon

I'll let you know, just give me a glass

Ilriyas

I would believe that authenticating a bottle would involve the year of bottling, brand, and rarity of the particular batch but I'm not terribly sure.

Cliff_Forster

I just mean to say, how can you ever be sure the collection is legit? Even then, what is the real value here? Does it actually improve once it leaves the barrel? Think the Mythbusters have it in their budget to do a blind taste test or something? Is 20K a bottle scotch better? I want to know, but you know, without spending 20K.

shwaip

I'll toss in $3.50

Tushon

tree fiddy

I'm trying to find the video, but not having luck at the moment. There was a guy who went over to a distillery and tasted a est. value $50k bottle (from memory) the "proper" way and described it as the single best thing he'd ever tasted and an orgasm in his mouth. It absolutely improves over time, even after the barrel.

Ilriyas

Scotch doesn't age out of the barrel so I doubt it would taste any better than a similarly aged batch (If it is bottled at 12 years then it will taste the same as another 12 year batch, that is, if they are made using the same methods)

As a collection it's certainly worth a ton of money but honestly I have no idea what would make it so special that it demands such high prices (Really good scotch tastes very similarly to other high quality scotch, subtle fruit and wood flavourings aside.) That said if the bottles came from some unique batch (Prepared differently, higher alcohol percentage, different flavours, etc.) they'd already be more valuable than a standard batch, though again I have no idea why the price label is so high.

Signal

I'll toss in the free breakfast sandwhich I just peeled off my Big Mac.

Once Whiskey is bottled, it does not age, it changes. A simple explanation can be found here:

The key in understanding whisky bottle ageing lies in understanding the change that red wine undergoes during bottle ageing. The two key elements here are air and tannins.

1. Just underneath the cork, there is always a bit of air in the bottle that can react with the wine. And furthermore, no cork can seal a bottle tightly enough to disallow any exchange of air with the outside. The exchange may be only minimal but it is there.

The interaction of wine with air is commonly called oxidation. This is a bit of a misconception because wine is not a homogenuous material like iron that can rust. It is a very complex mixture of many chemicals, some of which actually do oxidise and some of which are inert to the influence of oxygen.

2. The tannins contained in the wine – resulting from the stems and pips of the grapes as well as from the cask wood – slowly react with other substances to form new aromatic compounds.

In bottled whisky, exactly the same things happen. The process is much slower though because the alcohol forms a kind of coating around the reactive molecules that first has to be overcome by the reactants. And then, whisky has less tannins than red wine because the spirit itself does not contain any. All tannins present in whisky have been leeched out of the cask wood. This might also explain why especially old bourbon whiskey seem to beneftit drastically from bottle ageing. I remember one of the Malt Maniacs e-pistles where there is an amazing report about a tasting of some very old American whiskeys. Due to their maturation in fresh oak casks there should be more tannins present in those than in your average scotch.

midga

There's also the fact that it was made in the 20s, so there's no telling what might have been different in the process then compared to now.

I'm curious how bottle aging would effect a whisky like Crown (standard whisky, screw-top instead of cork). I've got a bottle I picked up the day I turned 21, and I plan to drink it when I turn 42 (not for any other reason than just because I want to. I honestly don't expect it to be any different, but the only reason I picked that bottle up was for the bag). And then, there's the question of how much change would happen if I only poured half of it, and saved the rest for when I turn 84 (assuming I don't get all cancerous or exploded before then). It would have a lot more air to react with, and I don't know if that would be a good or bad thing for it. Of course, it's not particularly good whisky, so I'm really not expecting much.

Tushon

It seems like you're arguing semantics by saying "it changes" vs "it ages" when used in reference to how long it has sat in a bottle, especially given the line

This might also explain why especially old bourbon whiskey seem to benefit drastically from bottle aging

Screw-tops are being used pretty commonly in wines now, so it probably depends. a "good" cork doesn't allow much, if any, outside air in and has a higher failure rate with premature oxidation or cork taint. If the screw top is normal, there is no ingress of outside air and that is expected behavior. The only downside is possibly with decades long aging, but that is not established.

midga

I don't know, aging would be a sort of change, wouldn't it? If the flavour is different at all after sitting around for a while, that'd certainly be a change, and it'd be due to getting older in the bottle, which I would certainly call "bottle aging." I don't know where the argument would come in.

I was given to understand that it would remain basically static while bottled, so knowing now that some sort of alteration will occur, to some degree or other on some level, makes me curious about the amount, whether detectable by taste or not.

Signal

Tushon said:

It seems like you're arguing semantics by saying "it changes" vs "it ages" when used in reference to how long it has sat in a bottle, especially given the line

This might also explain why especially old bourbon whiskey seem to benefit drastically from bottle aging

The term aging is usually reserved for the spirit being stored in the cask/barrel as the cask/barrel imparts flavor to the spirit. The term "bottle aging" is used to describe the process of breakdown parts of the spirit are going through. No flavor is imparted in the latter.

JBoogaloo

UPSLynx said:

That's crazy. I doubt I'd be able to enjoy a bottle like that myself if I could afford it. Some of those bottles survived WWII. You're drinking history at that point. Insane.

The stuff was meant to be imbibed and I hope to all powerful Atheismo that whoever purchases these does just that and speaks about how delicious or shitty it was.
It's like paying for an expensive hooker and then just sitting there and staring at them. It's there to be used, go and brag afterward!

Tushon

So, the semantic difference between aging and bottle aging. Flavors imparted from wood vs flavors altered via chemical breakdown. I'm going to stand by my original statement now: it improves over time in the bottle.

Signal

Tushon said:

So, the semantic difference between aging and bottle aging. Flavors imparted from wood vs flavors altered via chemical breakdown. I'm going to stand by my original statement now: it improves over time in the bottle.

But I would imagine there is a bell curve. Let's use a tomato as an example. Aging is like letting it ripen on the vine. More flavor is being put into the tomato at this point, but eventually it has to come off the vine. Too early and not enough flavor gets in, too late and you risk spoiling it. After it's off the vine it's still ripening, but nothing more is getting into the tomato. It's now just ripening by breaking down. At some point, the breakdown will start to ruin the taste. I'm wondering how many years before whiskey spoils.

Tushon

I'm guessing you're right on the possible ruining of taste eventually, but the tannin info you quoted makes me think that would MUCH harder with spirits. Wines with heavy tannins and good bottling can age for hundreds of years and don't have the "advantage" of this "protective coating" that spirits have on their breakdown components, so I would think they could go even longer, but this is thinking without looking to see if there is science out there on it.

Signal

Yeah I really would like to see some actual info on the tannin breakdown process, but I'm at work right now. If no one posts some info on this I'll look it up tonight and let you know what I find out.


Current Total:
1. shwaip $3.50
2. Signal Breakfast sandwhich

fluttershy

I do believe that is about 20k more than I can afford. That and I am a beer drinker. I really don't touch the harder drinks often....

Canti

Signal said:

Once Whiskey is bottled, it does not age

How to live forever, become whiskey.

fluttershy said:

I do believe that is about 20k more than I can afford. That and I am a beer drinker. I really don't touch the harder drinks often....

I will never not be able to read your posts in Fluttershy's voice.

UPSLynx

I have to believe Fluttershy enjoys liquor. I won't have it any other way.

UPSLynx

The price is seriously steep, and the liquid in that bottle doesn't deserve that price no matter how good, but you can't look at it like that.

Like I said, when you drink a bottle from the 20's, you're drinking history. It's about rarity, prestige, history. You can count on one hand how many bottles from those individual batches exist today. Sometimes they were one-offs, sometimes they were made to celebrate something. It's heritage for the distilleries, and a once in a lifetime chance for an enthusiast to own and sample something of such magnitude. I'm sure the scotch is extremely tasty, but it comes down simply. It has a high price because it demands respect.

mertesn

UPSLynx said:

The price is seriously steep, and the liquid in that bottle doesn't deserve that price no matter how good, but you can't look at it like that.

Like I said, when you drink a bottle from the 20's, you're drinking history. It's about rarity, prestige, history. You can count on one hand how many bottles from those individual batches exist today. Sometimes they were one-offs, sometimes they were made to celebrate something. It's heritage for the distilleries, and a once in a lifetime chance for an enthusiast to own and sample something of such magnitude. I'm sure the scotch is extremely tasty, but it comes down simply. It has a high price because it demands respect.

And I would thoroughly enjoy drinking it.