“Hey, there’s wood in my bottle.”
Who can argue that wood plays a vital role in the taste of your favorite whisk(e)y. In fact, in a Vinepair article it’s estimated that “wood is responsible for 60 to 75 percent of the taste of a finished whiskey.”
More than that, wood is the star of whiskey making with various types of oak, casks that previously held other spirits (even wine), different toasting techniques, even double barrel resting. Maker’s Mark 46 goes one step further and adds wood staves to the barrels. Described as follows: “The innovative wood-stave-finishing process starts with fully matured Maker’s Mark at cask strength. We then insert 10 seared virgin French oak staves into the barrel and finish it for nine weeks in our limestone cellar.”
A new and unique approach
The Sanctified Spirits Company, a startup in Texas, which owns the Oak & Eden brand of bourbon and rye whiskeys, uses a spiral piece of wood (referred to as a spire) inserted into the bottle. This patent pending technique, which they call in-bottle finished whiskey, consists of a 5-inch spiral cut piece of wood from the same species of wood as the barrel. They rest the product for 6 weeks and sell the whiskey with the spire in it.
While I am not a whiskey taster/reviewer, I’m an avid American Whiskey fan, so I tried it to see what it tastes like. The one I tried was Bourbon & Spire (“Bourbon Whiskey finished with a toasted oak spiral”). I loved it.
Here’s how Brad Neathery, Co-Founder and CMO, describes the process:
“The technique allows us the ability to create millions of combinations of whiskey expressions through …
