Proof: The Science of Booze

by Adam Rogers

The global popularity of whisky is squeezing those makers—more and more of them are switching to bottles with, as they say in the trade, no age statement. They don’t say how old it is, because their marketing has equated age with quality, and what’s in the bottle now includes spirit from younger barrels because they don’t have anything else to sell. As rum researcher Rafael Arroyo wrote in 1945: “The ever increasing demands of the trade, the lack of adequate working capital, the anxiety for immediate returns, immoderate and unfair competition and many other influences of businesses compel the manufacturers to place their products on the market in the shortest possible time.” So every producer of booze, major and craft alike, has a common fantasy: make something that tastes old without aging. As early as 1817, the industrial handbook The Cabinet of Arts, for example, recognizes in its chapter on brewing and distilling that time is the most important component of the flavor of fine French brandy. Its authors then go on to suggest that you should totally fake it. Distill a spirit as pure and flavor-free as possible, they say, and then add “oil of wine”—a wine concentrate—and some treacle or caramel for color. Presto! All the brandy, none of the wait.