barrel magic
Science is only now beginning to explain what tradition has taught generations: if you leave a whiskey in a barrel for years, or decades, under certain conditions, when you come back it will most likely taste better.
What happens in the barrel is somewhat known, but always a mystery. Two barrels that come off the cooper’s line right next to each other, filled with the same batch of new make, sitting next to each other in the rickhouse, may have very different characters. The thousands of variables affecting spirit maturation test the complexity of what science can explain.
Maturation happens in two phases: extractive and reactive. In the US, the minute new make
