Let’s talk about age statements.
In whisky, age is all important. It takes three years in an oak barrel to call a spirit a scotch, but not many people are interested until it’s much older. Eight years might elicit some interest, ten a bit more, but it’s not until a whisky hits its teens that heads start turning. Cross the line into 20s or 30s and you’ve stepped beyond the velvet ropes.
But it’s a law of diminishing returns. Older scotches are hard to find because age doesn’t always equate to great quality. A distillery’s master blender decides when a cask is ready and that can often be quite early on, well before a cask becomes “old.” A 40-year-old cask might be ordinary or even undrinkable, having rolled well past its zenith. Or it could be the finest liquid to ever touch your tongue.
Then there’s the 50. Fifty years. Now that’s an age statement.