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2 The Scottish Whiskey Time Machine


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I think because, because every bottle is individual in terms of its bottling date. So as I said, if a 10 year single malt was bottled in the 1960s and it's on the shelf beside another 10 year malt that was bottled in the 1980s, they're both worth the same value. They're both still 10 year single malts, it will not age inside the glass bottle, it'll stay exactly the same.

Whenever [00:00:30] I open the cap of a bottle of whisky I always look at the bottling date. It's within my lifetime I'll go to my drawer, I'll find one of my old journals or one of my old diaries, I'll flick back to that date and I'll find out what was going on in my life. Was I in love, was I out of love, was I happy, you know, what was going on? I reminisce. I imagine that when they bottled that whisky on that particular day the whisky captured some of the emotions and feelings [00:01:00] of that day and I will reminisce on the past. Like a little time machine, and I tell you what guys it does work, whisky is like a little time machine. The more that you drink, the more powerful the emotions will feel from that day. If you get to the very, very, bottom of the bottle, whoa! The time machine is so powerful that you will have regressed right back to very early childhood. It's absolutely amazing. So I see it as quite a romantic [00:01:30] drink. Every now and again guys, you will see, because even for a 50 year bottle of single malt, you are going to pay for a 50 year, you are going to pay, you need another mortgage, £20,000 to £35,000 a bottle, for a 50 year. Every now and again you will see a bottle of 10 year standard going on sale at the market for quarter of a million. You'll [00:02:00] think, "Why, it's just a 10 year?" Because the person who is buying that bottle has absolutely no interest in the whisky. They are a fanatic about something else and the bottling date on that whisky might be when the Red Sox won the World Series. Or, Elvis first got to number one. So they are not paying for the liquid they are paying for that date. They're a fanatic.

They've clearly got too much money because some people get confused about that, they're like, "Why has that [00:02:30] sold for so much money?" Is it, well, because the bottling date was the date that John Lennon died, or the day that something specific happened.

Speaker 2: So there is a, actual day, month and year? Speaker 1: Stamped on the bottle yes. The bottling date. Speaker 2: Every company does that?

Speaker 1: Every company, they have to do it by law. By duty and excise, because as soon as that, as soon, when they got to stamp everything with dates, because what happens is, is that before anything [00:03:00] leaves the distillery a Government official will go into there and he will count the literage that's under lock and key. That will be measured as in, one liter of whisky will weigh a kilo. When that truck leaves the distillery it must go onto a weigh scale and if the weight is incorrect the Government will not allow that truck to leave, so everything is bottled and dated and stamped [00:03:30] so that the Government official can then take the count of the literage that went through that day and then count the bottles. If they don't add up, that whisky does not leave the distillery until they find the missing whisky.

So the bottling and the dating, it's really, it's a way for the Government to monitor what it has taxed, what it hasn't taxed, and so on and so forth. It's also for, quite specific to the Master Distiller. So every batch that goes out, [00:04:00] he will take a sample. Then, every new batch, he will check the coloration and the smell of all the older batches to make sure there's not too much of a difference. So, it's quite important to the Master Distiller that he knows when they were bottled. So it's, there is a reason behind it. It's just such a, I don't know, you know, to think something takes so long [00:04:30] to produce. I mean 10 year is normally the youngest that any distilleries will produce. Some do produce a five year, but not many.

I mean, when a distillery is producing something like a 50 year, they're taking a very big risk. A 10 year cask will lose a third of the contents of the barrel to evaporation. We refer to that as the Angel's [00:05:00] Share. It's quite nice. Hopefully I've lived a good enough life, I'll become a whisky angel. So if a 10 year is losing a third of its cask to evaporation just imagine what you're losing in a 50 year. So quite often out of a cask, a 50 year cask, the distiller will be lucky to get six bottles and it's taken 50 years. Where he's taking the big risk, is that as alcohol gets older, [00:05:30] its potency reduces. If they unearth a 50 year and it tests below 39.5% alcohol it will not be classed as a neat spirit, therefore it cannot be classed as single malt and you've just wasted 50 years.

So it is quite a big risk that they take, it doesn't always, got, work in their favor, because what they do is, is they bury the cask to stop the evaporation happening so much. [00:06:00] Sometimes they'll unearth it, the cask has broken and it's all wasted and ruined. So it can be, you know, quite a skill, quite an art to make the whisky.


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