I have been well known for saying that older is not better – better is better. Age is not everything in American whiskey. In fact, the use of new cooperage can lead to over-aged and very tannic and bitter whiskey. Older whiskey, over 10 years of age, needs to be aged differently to be very good extra-aged whiskey. It needs to be kept low in the warehouse and preferably, with a lower barrel entry proof.

The extra-aged whiskeys are going to have a change in proof over the years, even in the middle range of the warehouse. It could be a small change, but it will change, even if it is only a fraction of a percent. If aged in the lower levels of the warehouse, the proof will decrease. If aged in the upper levels of the warehouse, it will increase. This increase rule is thrown out when the whiskey is aged in a heated warehouse as the heat is usually applied at the ground floor level in the winter, meaning the reverse happens in that season. Lower levels will be the hot floors and the whiskey will gain proof and the upper levels are the cool floors and will loose proof. The results are that the whiskey aged in heated warehouses will gain proof over the maturation period.

This brings us to “Proof”. So many people are obsessed with high proof whiskeys. They want to drink from bottles of whiskey that are 120 proof or higher. When drinking whiskey of that proof, your taste buds become numbed and you lose the ability to taste the subtle flavors of the whiskey. These whiskeys need a splash of water to truly enjoy them. When I went to a tasting of the Beam small batch collection in the mid-nineties, Booker Noe added his tasting of Booker’s to a tall glass of water and ice. He told us that is the way he enjoyed Booker’s. You get the flavor of the Bourbon, but the proof is lowered so that you can perceive the subtle flavors as well as the dominant flavors.

A lower barrel entry proof will create a whiskey that is lower in proof than you would expect after a long maturation period. That is one reason I like Michter’s whiskeys so much. They have a barrel entry proof of 103 and that means their barrel strength whiskeys are about 110 in proof after aging in their heated warehouses. This makes their whiskey drinkable without adding water at barrel proof. William Howard Taft said in his famous decision on whiskey that drinkable proof was “between 90 and 105 proof”. Those were the common barrel entry proofs of that time (1909 was the Taft Decision).

Many people praise the whiskey they drink from “dusty” bottles from the 1960s or older. These whiskeys all went into the barrel at 110 or less as that was the limit on barrel entry proof until 1964. What also impacts the flavor of these bottles is the bottling proof. Bottled-in-Bond was generally the standard of the time. There were a few higher proofed whiskeys such as Wild Turkey 101 or Weller Original Barrel Proof at 107 that were bottled at higher than 100 proof, but you never saw whiskeys bottled at 125 proof or higher. One reason was that few whiskeys ever got that high in proof after eight years of aging. Until 1958, eight years was the bonding period for aging whiskey and you had to pay your taxes on the whiskey at that time. Most distilleries did not let whiskey age past that period because they to wanted sell the whiskey to pay the taxes.

You began to see older whiskeys on the market after 1959 and it is about 1970 before you would see whiskeys that have barrel entry proofs of 125. Even after these times, most distilleries considered “old” whiskey to be eight years old and many distillers resisted raising their barrel entry proof for many years after 1964. When you drink a whiskey from a dusty bottle, these factors play an important role in creating the flavors you are experiencing.

Certainly there are many factors that affect the final flavor profile of a whiskey, but these are a few of my random thoughts on age and proof. I hope you enjoyed my rambling, as sometimes I feel I need to do so.