12-year-old whiskey and storing it for 3 years VS a 15-year-old whiskey
In: 1
3 years spent in an oxygen free environment with no sunlight and controlled temperature and humidity surrounded by flavourful oak barrel, and allowing any impurities to settle out.
vs.
3 years sitting on the shelf with air leaking in through the cork and light filtering in through the bottle, which doesn’t add anything to the flavour, and any off flavours are contained in the bottle.
Aging a 12 year whiskey in the bottle for an additional three years is not the equivalent of a 15 year aged spirit as the aging in the barrel is the difference maker and where the flavor and complexity differences come from.
Whisky **only** ages in the cask. This is because the wood of the cask is semi-porous, allowing the alcohol to absorb into the wood and pull out alcohol-soluble compounds, then pull those back into the liquid whisky. Those compounds are what give the whisky its distinctive color and flavor. There is also some evaporation, but that is less important.
The longer the whisky is allowed to mature in the cask, the more subtle flavors it is able to absorb from the wood. The age of the whisky is _always_ the number of years it spent in the cask (or, in the case of a blend, the number of years the youngest whisky in the blend spent in the cask).
Once the whisky is removed from the cask, the aging process stops. A whisky removed from the cask after 10 years is and will always be a 10-year-old whisky, no matter how long the bottle sits on the shelf.
So, to your question directly, a 12-year-old whisky that is stored for 3 years remains a 12-year-old whisky. It can never become a 15-year-old whisky.
Whiskey gains character and color from the wood in which it rests. Aging it in wooden barrels changes the whiskey, presumably for the better. It’s an important part of the process of making whiskey.
Storing whiskey in corked bottles for three years doesn’t have the same effect. In fact it’s risky to do so, because warmth, sunlight, and dry corks can adversely affect the flavor. If it’s an expensive whiskey — and some can be very expensive — there’s also the risk of theft or breakage.
For clarity:
The “age” of a whiskey isn’t actually how old it is. It refers to the length of time it spent in the barrel.
You can get a 12-year-old bottle of whiskey that is 50 years old. Just means it spent 12 years in the barrel, was removed, and then has spent 38 more years on this earth as whiskey but not in a barrel.
along the same lines but different, a lot of the “product” is lost to evaporation, which is one reason longer aged bourbons/whiskeys/etc. cost significantly more.
As others point out, the aging process takes place in a cask. Depending in the type of whiskey, there are usually strict requirements on the type of cask. Whiskey is almost always stored in Oak casks, either American, French, or Spanish oak. Bourbon, for example, requires charing the inside of an American oak cask before filling. Otherwise, it’s not bourbon.
Some whiskeys are aged in previously used casks, from bourbon or wine, which transfers some of that flavor.
So, the cask and the various chemicals it contains leech into the stored whiskey, and this is very important to the final flavor.
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