dwasson
02-02-2006, 04:45 PM
Now who do we believe?
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Bourbon not over a barrel
Mild winter weather not a problem, distillers say
By David Goetz
dgoetz@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
For some Kentuckians, the mild winter has left a question hanging in the temperate air like the odor of whiskey in a rickhouse:
What about the bourbon?
According to distillery lore, Kentucky's changing seasons are nature's way of transforming what essentially is moonshine into the mature, richly flavored bourbons that are the signature drink of the commonwealth.
Summer's heat bears down on the warehouses, expanding the aging whiskey in the sealed barrels and driving it into the charred white oak, where it picks up color and flavor. Then winter's icy grip squeezes it back out to mix and meld with the rest of the aging distillate.
Part of the distiller's traditional art lies in moving the barrels up, down and around in the warehouse to make the best use of the building's temperature variations.
It seems reasonable that a winter like this could alter that process. A number of environmentally oriented Web sites even have begun raising the alarm that global warming could threaten the future of Kentucky bourbon itself.
But some of Kentucky's prominent master distillers aren't bothered by this winter's weather.
"I think it's almost ideal," said Heaven Hill's Parker Beam. "If you could put together a number of years like this, you probably could … come out with some maturer product a little quicker."
The aging process doesn't require big temperature swings, Beam said. On these mild winter days, sunlight heats the whiskey well and the nights have been cool enough to draw it back out of the wood. That has turned each day and night into a kind of mini-season, speeding maturation.
"It's made the barrel work ideally, the way it's designed to do," he said.
The faster aging doesn't mean shifting more barrels around, Beam said. With 47 warehouses and 760,000 barrels to handle, that would be too labor-intensive.
So the distillery uses whiskey from the warmer tops of the warehouses, where it stays in the wood longer, for the premium small-batch and single-barrel versions of its Evan Williams, Elijah Craig and Old Fitzgerald brands. Whiskey from the lower floors is combined to match the standard taste of the regular versions of the brands, including Heaven Hill.
Brown-Forman Corp. makes its own weather at its Old Forester and Woodford Reserve warehouses during the winter, using steam heat to raise the temperature of the whiskey to 85 degrees and hold it there for a week.
Then the heat goes off, the doors and windows are opened and the whiskey is allowed to cool to 70 degrees. There's so much liquid in the warehouse it takes a long time for the whiskey temperature to change, said master distiller Chris Morris, so daily fluctuations outside aren't significant.
Neither is the amount of time the whiskey is in the barrel. Brown-Forman doesn't put an age statement on its bourbons.
"It's not about age, it's about the flavor for us," Morris said. "We know what Woodford Reserve is supposed to taste like and we know what Old Forester is supposed to taste like."
A few degrees of global warming might make for a richer bourbon flavor, but Scotch whisky is another matter, Morris said.
"If I was in Scotland I'd be worried, possibly."
Scotch matures more slowly. Scotch is aged in used bourbon barrels, and the weather is cool and damp so it needs 12, 15 or 25 years to achieve the desired flavor.
"If their climate heated up -- of course this is just speculation -- the flavor would come out of the wood a little quicker and … they'd run the risk of building up some astringency," Morris said. "They'd really have to adapt to having younger whiskeys, I would think, to maintain the flavor profiles their customer expects now."
Maker's Mark master distiller Dave Pickerell is a little more dependent on the weather than some bourbon makers. He's mothering a single brand to maturity, so he has to move barrels around the warehouse to speed or slow maturation.
"It's something you have to take into account," Pickerell said of the weather. "I don't know if you could say that it's caused problems, per se. From the standpoint of whiskey maturation, you just kind of have to wait and see how it matures."
It takes about six years for Maker's Mark to reach its standard flavor, Pickerell said, so he looks for average temperatures over that time. "If we had a lot of mild winters and temperate summers over the long haul we'd be concerned."
If winter and summer temperatures were to rise a few degrees, there wouldn't be much impact on aging, he said, because temperature fluctuation is the key. "This year is not going to give us as much maturation" but previous years have been good.
But if there were a huge climatic change, it would be hard to make bourbon in Kentucky, Pickerell said.
"If we wound up with a climate like Florida has or Louisiana has, where you get to a certain capped-out high temperature and the winters get warmer, that might make a difference," he said. "I don't see that being a problem unless the Gulf of Mexico decides to invade Tennessee."
______________________________ _____
Bourbon not over a barrel
Mild winter weather not a problem, distillers say
By David Goetz
dgoetz@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
For some Kentuckians, the mild winter has left a question hanging in the temperate air like the odor of whiskey in a rickhouse:
What about the bourbon?
According to distillery lore, Kentucky's changing seasons are nature's way of transforming what essentially is moonshine into the mature, richly flavored bourbons that are the signature drink of the commonwealth.
Summer's heat bears down on the warehouses, expanding the aging whiskey in the sealed barrels and driving it into the charred white oak, where it picks up color and flavor. Then winter's icy grip squeezes it back out to mix and meld with the rest of the aging distillate.
Part of the distiller's traditional art lies in moving the barrels up, down and around in the warehouse to make the best use of the building's temperature variations.
It seems reasonable that a winter like this could alter that process. A number of environmentally oriented Web sites even have begun raising the alarm that global warming could threaten the future of Kentucky bourbon itself.
But some of Kentucky's prominent master distillers aren't bothered by this winter's weather.
"I think it's almost ideal," said Heaven Hill's Parker Beam. "If you could put together a number of years like this, you probably could … come out with some maturer product a little quicker."
The aging process doesn't require big temperature swings, Beam said. On these mild winter days, sunlight heats the whiskey well and the nights have been cool enough to draw it back out of the wood. That has turned each day and night into a kind of mini-season, speeding maturation.
"It's made the barrel work ideally, the way it's designed to do," he said.
The faster aging doesn't mean shifting more barrels around, Beam said. With 47 warehouses and 760,000 barrels to handle, that would be too labor-intensive.
So the distillery uses whiskey from the warmer tops of the warehouses, where it stays in the wood longer, for the premium small-batch and single-barrel versions of its Evan Williams, Elijah Craig and Old Fitzgerald brands. Whiskey from the lower floors is combined to match the standard taste of the regular versions of the brands, including Heaven Hill.
Brown-Forman Corp. makes its own weather at its Old Forester and Woodford Reserve warehouses during the winter, using steam heat to raise the temperature of the whiskey to 85 degrees and hold it there for a week.
Then the heat goes off, the doors and windows are opened and the whiskey is allowed to cool to 70 degrees. There's so much liquid in the warehouse it takes a long time for the whiskey temperature to change, said master distiller Chris Morris, so daily fluctuations outside aren't significant.
Neither is the amount of time the whiskey is in the barrel. Brown-Forman doesn't put an age statement on its bourbons.
"It's not about age, it's about the flavor for us," Morris said. "We know what Woodford Reserve is supposed to taste like and we know what Old Forester is supposed to taste like."
A few degrees of global warming might make for a richer bourbon flavor, but Scotch whisky is another matter, Morris said.
"If I was in Scotland I'd be worried, possibly."
Scotch matures more slowly. Scotch is aged in used bourbon barrels, and the weather is cool and damp so it needs 12, 15 or 25 years to achieve the desired flavor.
"If their climate heated up -- of course this is just speculation -- the flavor would come out of the wood a little quicker and … they'd run the risk of building up some astringency," Morris said. "They'd really have to adapt to having younger whiskeys, I would think, to maintain the flavor profiles their customer expects now."
Maker's Mark master distiller Dave Pickerell is a little more dependent on the weather than some bourbon makers. He's mothering a single brand to maturity, so he has to move barrels around the warehouse to speed or slow maturation.
"It's something you have to take into account," Pickerell said of the weather. "I don't know if you could say that it's caused problems, per se. From the standpoint of whiskey maturation, you just kind of have to wait and see how it matures."
It takes about six years for Maker's Mark to reach its standard flavor, Pickerell said, so he looks for average temperatures over that time. "If we had a lot of mild winters and temperate summers over the long haul we'd be concerned."
If winter and summer temperatures were to rise a few degrees, there wouldn't be much impact on aging, he said, because temperature fluctuation is the key. "This year is not going to give us as much maturation" but previous years have been good.
But if there were a huge climatic change, it would be hard to make bourbon in Kentucky, Pickerell said.
"If we wound up with a climate like Florida has or Louisiana has, where you get to a certain capped-out high temperature and the winters get warmer, that might make a difference," he said. "I don't see that being a problem unless the Gulf of Mexico decides to invade Tennessee."