by gillmang » Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:49 am
All interesting and useful thoughts. My own opinion is, Early Times does not have the full taste I associate with a traditional straight bourbon. It is quite a bit lighter in flavor although bourbon-like, yes. True, Basil Hayden is quite light too but that I think is related to the light barrel char I assume it is exposed to (kind of a Beam characteristic, none of its whiskeys have a heavy smoky quality to my mind). A light char may mean a whiskey is legally a straight bourbon but it doesn't mean it will taste like many feel a traditional bourbon should. In my view, aging in all-used barrels (subject to one thing I will say below but I mean here in barrels exhausted of their red layer) does not impart bourbon characteristics. The reason Early Times has some bourbon characteristics is the great majority of the barrels used to age it are new charred barrels. But if you don't use any, no or little boubon taste will result (a least as that term is understood today). E.g. one of the current Michter's line is a whiskey that is not called bourbon on the label. It is I understand a bourbon mash aged in reused barrels whether in whole or in part. It is good but does not taste like bourbon to me. To me, the red layer sugars and also a slight burned taste are the bourbon markers and I don't taste that in this whiskey.
Now I agree that if you take some new charred barrels filled with bourbon, empty them and refill them with a bourbon mash, you may end up wth something close to bourbon. If those barrels were only, say, 4 years old when emptied, that might happen. And that explains I think why whiskeys such as Bushmills have a slight bourbon note, plus the fact that that Bush 16 has been in them so long even "exhausted" barrels may have some bourbon character to give the Irish whiskey.
Here we get into the question of how fast a bourbon barrel gives up its essential bourbon attributes to the whiskey. If it gives them up in 4 years, then almost any bourbon barrel re-employed to hold a bourbon mash won't do much for the spirit. If it does not give them up in 4 years, then maybe reusing barrels can give some bourbon character if the barrels when first reused are not too old. E.g. if they are 12 years old, they will likely do nothing for any bourbon mash put in them as refill except to contain the product and mellow it but in a different way (more like what those barrels do for malt whisky perhaps). I suspect that the barrels that held that Michter's whiskey were either older when re-employed and hadn't much to give the spirit in the bourbon way, or were 4 year old barrels (or thereabouts) but were light-charred to begin with so couldn't do much for the new spirit. Maybe, and this is something I am coming to believe, no bourbon barrel has many more wood sugars to give after about 4 years. It may have some, and can impart additional smoky quality as the spirit ages, but I don't think it has that much more sugar to give after 4 or 5 years and it is the combination of the two (smoke and sweet) that typifies bourbon for me. This is why I think malt whisky doesn't taste like bourbon. Most of it is put into 4-5 year old barrels (say ex-Jack Daniel or Old Forester barrels or whatever) and held in them for 10-20 years but as noted little malt whisky tastes like bourbon. True, the peat may hide that taste but not all malt whisky is heavily peated, in fact much of it today is unpeated or almost unpeated.
I think when Mike Veach talks about bourbon having once been aged partly or totally in reused barrels or maybe new uncharred or toasted barrels, he means simply that in that time there was a larger conception of what bourbon is than today. It may be that people who had interests in barrel making plants did push for a definition of bourbon that would restrict it to an all-new charred wood-aged product, I don't know. But personally I believe that the reason the law was written this way is that people knew, or it was handed down as general knowledge, that aging in all-new charred wood makes the best bourbon. A quality standard was being laid down. When you do that you go for the best. I feel that unless bourbon has a faint tang of smoke and a decent amount of wood sugars it isn't a traditional bourbon. It may still be a good drink, and Early Times isn't bad by any means but to me the bourbon character it has comes from 80% of its barrels being new charred wood, you can't get away from that in my view.
Gary