Spirits
7 entries. What a bottle is — what one is like stays with the room.
Term
- Age statementStartAn age statement is the age of the youngest spirit in the bottle. In a whisky blended from casks of different ages, the number on the label is the youngest of them — never an average.
- PeatStartPeat is partly decayed vegetation, cut and dried as fuel. When it is burned to dry malted barley, its smoke deposits phenolic compounds on the grain, and those carry through fermentation and distillation into the whisky.
- The angels' shareStartThe angels' share is the spirit lost to evaporation through the cask during maturation. It is unavoidable, it compounds every year, and it is most of why old whisky is expensive.
- ProofStartProof is a way of stating alcoholic strength. In the United States it is exactly twice the alcohol by volume, so 100 proof is 50% ABV. The historical British proof scale was a different number entirely and is no longer in use.
- Cask strengthStartCask strength means bottled at or near the strength the spirit came out of the cask, without dilution to a standard bottling figure — typically somewhere in the fifties or sixties percent ABV rather than the usual 40 to 46.
- BourbonStartBourbon is defined by US federal regulation rather than by tradition or geography: a mash of at least 51% corn, distilled to no more than 160 proof, put into new charred oak containers at no more than 125 proof, bottled at no less than 80 proof, and made in the United States.
- Single maltStartA single malt is a whisky made from malted barley at one distillery. "Single" refers to the single distillery — not to a single barrel or a single batch. Almost every single malt on a shelf is a blend of many casks.