Whats the difference between age, year and vintage in whiskey ? Thank you
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Whiskey is aged in wooden barrels to get some of the flavor of the wood. The longer it spends in the barrel, the more of that flavor it will pick up. Once it goes into a bottle, that process stops.
A whiskey that is 18 years old doesn’t necessarily mean it was *aged* for 18 years. It could have spent 18 years in a bottle on a shelf, which means it has only aged for the months or year or two it spent in a barrel.
Vintage matters less for whiskey than, say, wine. Grapes have a fair amount of variety due to things like weather. Different grape qualities will affect the flavor of the wine, such that wine from a particular year may develop a reputation as being particularly good or bad. Some people also attach sentimental value to a year, like if something really good happened that year.
So the *age* of a whiskey generally means how long it spent in the barrel. Year and vintage depend on who you’re talking to, but it’s probably the year the grain was harvested to make it.
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