A distiller takes care and picks their mash bill and ages the whiskey to a point where they think it is mature and ready to bottle, but then they have several decisions to make to bring out the flavor profile they desire. I thought I would look at these decisions in this blog.
The first decision to make is the whiskey itself. Do they want to blend together several barrels or bottle the whiskey as a single barrel whiskey? A single barrel whiskey limits the number of barrels to one barrel at that flavor profile because each barrel is going to have subtle differences. The most economical method is to blend several barrels together to get the flavor profile you want and then you have a lot of bottles to sell. It takes skill to blend barrels in a perfect flavor profile and that is why we have Master Blenders. They may also be the distiller of the whiskey, but not always.
Next you have to decide upon filtration. All whiskeys have some filtration to get the majority of the charcoal from the barrel out of the whiskey, but this a minimal filtration that takes place when the whiskey barrels are dumped. Many distillers bottle their whiskey with only this minimal filtration. However, filtration is a good thing for many other whiskeys. They can take out a lot of bitter tannins from the barrel and allow other flavors to come forward. Chill filtration, cooling the whiskey down to make oils and other elements in the whiskey congeal, is a popular method for doing this process. In my opinion, chill filtration is best used for older whiskeys because it does a better job removing tannins than other methods. There are other methods such as charcoal filtration where a small amount of charcoal is tossed into the holding tank and the whiskey is agitated, allowing impurities to cling to the charcoal and then the whiskey is run through a paper filter. Michter’s has several methods of filtering their whiskey and they use different methods with different whiskeys. The idea is to filter out the undesirable flavors while leaving the good flavors.
Next is bottling proof. A distiller will decide which proof will bring out the flavors they want. Proof affects the flavor of the whiskey as higher proof whiskey allows different flavors to come through, but some of those flavors may not be what the distiller desires. It is a balancing act that makes the Master Blender apprehensive. A good blender will try samples of many different proofs to pick their final whiskey. There is also an economical factor to consider. The lower the proof, the more water is added to the whiskey and the more bottles they get from the dump.
The final choice is the package itself. They need to design a label and pick a bottle. Appearance of the package does have an impact on bottle sales and final price of the whiskey. Does the bottle have a cork or a screw cap? Is the bottle a standard bottle or does the distiller want to invest the money in designing a new bottle? New bottle designs are very expensive to make, but could be worth it for larger volumes of whiskey. These are a few of my thoughts on bottling whiskey. I had to make these decisions when Bill Thomas and I bottled our Fountain Run Bourbon. I chose a Bottled-in-Bond for the proof and blended all four barrels together. I chose a screw cap bottle with a 19th century look. I believe I made the correct decisions.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller