分享 - 威士忌裝瓶後, 會繼續陳年嗎?

這個議題已爭論很久,但是結論是什麼? 從以下文章看來,

由於緩慢的氧化作用, 和單寧酸持續與威士忌中其他化學物質作用,

因此裝瓶後風味和香氣確實會持續變化, 尤其以波本桶威士忌最為顯著.

有興趣嚐試的大大, 不妨選個喜歡的波本桶威士忌試驗看看.

Does Whisky Age in a Bottle?

Just like the issue of whisky with vs. without ice, this question is one that is continuously

popping up among whisky lovers. Much has been written about that topic, but still there

is much uncertainty and confusion about it. Let me try to shed some light on this.

The Old Commonplace: It doesn’t!

One of the things any aspiring whisky afficionado learns first, is that whisky does not

change after it has been bottled, under the condition that it has been properly stored.

A 10yo bottled in 1970 will still be a 10yo today. Unlike wine, which does change

after bottling quite a bit, the high alcohol concentration forbids anything to happen

inside the liquid. So they say.

Or does It?

But nevertheless many have reported that they had found differences in taste between

two bottles of the same whisky opened within a period of many years. Can this be

explained only by psychology? And then there is also the strange phenomenon that

many ancient bottles containing whisky bottled at a young age seem to get much

better marks than their contemporary cousins. Is this just because “they don’t make

it like that anymore”? So much research has been done around whisky making that it

 is hard to believe that just using Golden Promise barley instead of the modern varieties

and heating the stills with a direct fire could powderize all progress in whisky making in

the last fifty years.

So It Does Then?

Meanwhile, more and more whisky lovers recognize the fact that their favourite tipple

does indeed change over time, even in a sealed bottle. The high alcohol content may

work against it, but if you look at it with a bit of common sense, it should be clear that

something just must happen in the bottle after the cork has been sealed.

And What Exactly Does Happen?

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 homogeneous 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.

So in my opionion it would be foolish to believe that all of the hundreds of chemical

substances that are present in whisky would become totally inert right after bottling.

源自 http://www.whisky-rating.com/2010/03/21/does-whisky-age-in-a-bottle/