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First White Whiskey, Now Brown Gin: Beefeater Joins the Unusual Aging Trend

Today Beefeater annouced the launch of Burrough's Reserve, a gin aged in Lillet barrels. It comes as part of a larger trend of reversing the traditional aging times of spirits and cocktails. 

White whiskies have been a huge trend for several years, mostly led by the craft distilling movement. The small batch distillers couldn't afford to wait for their whiskies to fully mature before selling them, so they all started selling young, barely, or not-at-all-aged spirit. The trend became so big that the major brands couldn't ignore it. Even Jack Daniels and Jim Beam released young/unaged whiskies at the end of last year. 

Meanwhile, in the mixology world, bartenders are taking things that are usually not aged and aging them: cocktails. This trend has also become too big to ignore, with even Vegas casino bars offering barrel-aged drinks. Bartenders are aging  straight spirits in small casks as well; sometimes to make them woody, sometimes to absorb the previous spirit soaked into the wood into the current spirit aging in it (the equivalent of cask 'finishing' frequently used in scotch whisky).

A couple months ago, word leaked about Absolut Amber, which is "a 40% abv vodka that has been aged for a minimum of six months with a variety of wood, including ex-Bourbon barrels, American oak and Swedish oak, as well as a variety of roasted American and French oak chips."

That was a pretty big departure for a company with mostly fruit and spice flavored vodkas, and seems to acknowledge the barrel-aging trend.

So too does the new Burrough's Reserve Gin from Beefeater, which is "distilled in a small historic copper still from the 19th Century, then uniquely rested in Jean de Lillet oak barrels. " (Jean de Lillet is a vintage reserve version of Lillet aperitif.) It will launch first in Spain in June, then the UK, then the US in October 2013. 

These are not by a long shot the first aged vodka and gins on the market. There was a big spike in aged gins several years back, after the launch of Bols Genever and Hayman's Old Tom, with other distillers deciding to create vintage-styled spirits. And some aged vodkas, like Starka from Poland, go back centuries. 

But with some of the world's biggest spirits companies now getting behind the unusual aging trend, many more people will be exposed to it, and perhaps more people will consider  how and why spirits are aged, and what that does to create the flavors of their favorite brands. 

 

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Brown-Forman Cooperage Pics and Videos

The Brown-Forman Cooperage is located in Louisville, Kentucky. There they make the barrels for Jack Daniels and their other brands. Below are some pictures from my visit.

You can read about what I saw in my story for CLASS Magazine here. 

Below are a couple of videos. The first is the machine that puts hoops around barrels. 

The second video is of the charring process of the barrels. Fire!

The American Whiskey Trail: History in the Making

A few weeks ago I traveled along the American Whiskey Trail, from Washginton DC to Tennessee to Kentucky. While I'll have a lot more to write about the whiskey distilleries I visited, here's a first story in CLASS Magazine about the rest of the trip: the historic sites, copper still makers, and cooperage.

The highlights of a trip through America's whiskey distilleries are, of course, the distilleries themselves: the contrasting scales of operations in Tennessee of the George Dickel distillery and its neighbour Jack Daniel's; the gleaming new Wild Turkey distillery in Kentucky; the idyllic village-like setting of Maker's Mark; the rare pot stills at Woodford Reserve. But getting out of the commercial distilleries and into the museums and machine shops reveals a bigger picture of the past, present and future of American whiskey.

The American Whiskey Trail (AmericanWhiskeyTrail.com) is an initiative of the Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS) designed to promote the cultural heritage of spirits in the USA. The website, which suggests distilleries to visit from its member companies (major liquor owners like Diageo and Jim Beam), links to a map of its many craft distilling affiliate members (that may or may not be open to the public for visits), and also encompasses several historical sites.

Geographically, the trail extends as far north as the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York City, includes historic points of interest in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and includes the two major Tennessee whiskey distilleries - George Dickel and Jack Daniel's - along with four bourbon distilleries in Kentucky. From a practical standpoint the entire American Whiskey Trail would likely make a week-long road trip, though the majority of the distilleries and sites are in a small geographic area between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky.

My trip, however, began in Virginia....

 

Read the rest of the story here.

Videos of Recharring Barrels at Hakushu Distillery

On my visit to the Hakushu distillery in Japan we watched a guy recharring ex-bourbon barrels. Recharring is when you refresh a barrel by burning the inside of a previously-used cask to give it additional life for aging spirits. 

In this first video, we watch the recharring process while Mike Miyamoto explains that whisky aged in recharred barrels is more astringent than whisky aged in non-recharred barrels. 

In this second video, we watch the rechar guy put out the flame with one scoop of water. 

 

A Visit to the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Hakushu distillery in Japan. Today I'll write about Suntory's other single-malt distillery, Yamazaki. It is located between Kyoto and Osaka, at the convergence of several rivers. I believe they said the distillery welcomes 100,000 visitors each year. 

(Mount Fuji as seen from the train to Kyoto.)

The Yamazaki distillery was built in 1923 and launched its first whisky, the White Label, in 1929. That whisky is still made today.

The distillery location was chosen because of its water (as are most distilleries), also sought out by Sen no Rikyo, the inventor of the Japanese tea ceremony. One of his tea houses from the 1500s still stands nearby.

 

Like at Hakushu they import malted barley from Scotland, then grind it, mash it, ferment it, distill it, and age it on site. At Yamazaki they use a combination of wooden and stainless steel washbacks (fermentation vessels). They use the same yeasts as at Hakushu, but sometimes in different proportions. 

They have six differently-shaped pairs of stills to make whiskies with many different flavor characteristics, further enhanced by aging in five different types of barrels. 

Hogsheads (reassembled ex-bourbon barrels at a larger size), puncheons (large barrels made of new American oak), and Mizunara (Japanese oak) barrels are made at the cooperage in Japan at their grain distillery.

Spanish oak sherry butts are made for them in Spain, and ex-bourbon barrels are what they are. 

Mizunara oak grows in the north of Japan, and sometimes in Hokkaido. I used to describe its flavor as similar to sandalwood incense, but on this visit I was tasting it more as a combination of sticky pine tree and cedar. Either way, it's got spice. 

They still have a cask from 1924 in the warehouse (though they've swapped out the whisky) and you can see the Cadiz sherry stamp beneath the Yamazaki one. 

We tasted whiskies aged in three types of oak: Mizunara, Spanish ex-sherry, and new American oak puncheons. 

From the Yamazaki website, "White oak adds vanilla and coconut flavours during the aging process. Tannins and other polyphenols contained in Spanish oak casks leach into the whisky, imbuing it with a deeper reddish hue compared with white oak casks. Whiskies aged in Spanish oak casks typically have fruity, chocolate notes. Over long periods of aging the Japanese oak casks add a distinctively Eastern touch to the whisky, endowing it with sweet fragrances reminiscent of incense with a hint of citrus. This unique flavour has been gaining the Yamazaki brand new adherents around the world." 

At Yamazaki they have six different still shapes, use five types of barrels, and barley at two peating levels. This adds up to 6x5x2 = 60 different whiskies produced at this distillery to be used in single malt and in blends.

Speaking of blends, the Hibiki blend is assembled at this distillery as well. (I think the lower-end blended whiskies that we don't get in the States are put together here too.) The blends have aged grain, column-distilled whiskies along with the single malts from the Hakushu and Yamazaki distilleries. 

At the distillery, there is a tasting room where you can try a variety of distillery-only products like 100% sherry cask Yamazaki the 1980s and white dog.

They also have a library of their whisky experiments.

And an advertising museum. I wish they'd bring back Uncle Torys.

 

Now that we've talking about how they make Hakushu, Yamazaki, and Hibiki, I'll get into where and how to drink them in Japan over the next few posts.

 

The Mysteries Wood Maturation at Tales of the Cocktail

Here are notes from the Mysteries of Wood Maturation seminar at Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans.

• "We want to keep the character of the base spirit, but we don't want to have vinegar. Wood helps us do that. It takes some of those acids out that we don't want." Dale DeGroff
• "We don't really know how far back barrel usage goes." Doug Frost. Theoretically you could throw it off a boat and it would float for a while. One person can roll it up a hill. "The very idea of bending staves is not way out - we're talking about ship-building." Doug Frost
• "It was in idea vessel and it just happened to provide flavor." Doug Frost
• "The very idea of whisky and brandy as aged products is a relatively new - 150 years or so- concept." Doug Frost
• Barrels we use for aging have about 5 percent tanin, 23 percent lignin, 70 percent cellulose. Resinous/turpentine elements in oak for barrels is tiny and that's what we want. - Doug Frost
• Prescription Julep - made with both bonded rye and cognac
• In barrels alcohol solubilizes extractable substances from the wood and acquires color. The color acquisition is gradual 
• Troncais oak was planted methodically in rows. The circles/grains have tighter grains. Limousin oak is fatter, grows among bushes. 
• Oxidation: taste mellows down, stewed oak aromas (from toasting) disappear, replaced by floral aromas specific to the type of oak used and the toasting. Color intensifies. 
• In France, 24 to 36 months natural drying in open air. Humidity in wood is  brought down from 17 percent to 10-14 percent. This tightens the fibers and locks in aromatic wood compounds. Harsh tannins undergo polymerization and eliminates the hard ones that taste like turpentine. Rain water washes the wood. 
• Rain, Dampness, sun, winds, temperature variations, and micro-organisms all act on wood as it's aging outdoors. 
• Wood from US - aromatic, sweet, low tannins. French: complex and aromatic, don't aromatically overwhelm the eau de vie.
•  Fine grain wood better for long aging. 
• The main aromas in wood: Eugenol - spices, cloves. Vanillin - vanilla, sweetness, sugars, Christmas cake finish. Whisky Lactone - grated coconut, mushroom, mulch, celery. (If too strong, lactone gives bitterness.) Mixed together over the years the levels of these three things give rancio; flavors that don't really go togher. "A mix of youth age spiciness, flower, tobacco, cigar box"
• At Vicard cooperage in France (read about my visit to Vicard here on Alcademics) they use corrugated staves. These allow more exchange between the spirit in the wood. 
• If you have too much moisture inside the stave, you'll get blisters when you toast the staves. These cause leaks. 
• "Consumers are being more and more difficult today, and they know what they're drinking."
• Can we separate what the wood does from what time in wood does? Yes, says, Doug Frost. As something ages in barrels it tastes on the spices from the barrel, caramel vanilla butterscotch. But then we take a step back - evaporation/oxidation from time in oak - you begin to make the fruit character we start with get riper and riper - raisin and dates and figs. If I'm smelling cinnamon and coconut and black pepper that's just the oak talking; the other notes are from time.
• "Some 50 year old cognacs taste dried out to me - the fruit gets more and more ripe until it gets dried out." Doug Frost 
• You always want to start aging in a humid cellar because these are when the biggest extractions take place 18 months - 2 years in a humid cellar, then move to a dry cellar. (In cognac.) You might bring a barrel back to the humid cellar to give it a little push. 
• We a next tried Parker's Heritage Collection - 10 year old bourbon finished in cognac casks, 100 proof. I'm no bourbon expert but I am pretty sure people are going to like this stuff a lot when it comes out later this year.