Why is “older” whiskey generally considered better than “newer” whiskey? And does this apply to all alcohol?
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Other people have answered the core question, that time in a barrel allows flavors to develop or for unwanted flavors to age out, but I just want to touch on the concept of an age statement and how useless it is in determining if you’ll like a whiskey (unless you have a bunch of other context about the whiskey).
The age statement refers to the youngest barrel added to the mix. It’s normal for blenders to pick several barrels and mix them to get the desired flavor, you can’t expect every barrel to all be the same. This means there could have been a 26, a 12, and a 6 year old whiskey mixed together and bottled, but the age statement can only say 6 years.
There are also diminishing returns on aging. It is incorrect to say that older is better, and after a while the “aging out” of flavors will start removing things you do want. Note that whiskey only ages in the barrel, the bottle of 10 year old whiskey you bought in ’87 and kept sealed is not now a 46 year old whiskey. Wine ages in the bottle because it isn’t distilled, so there are still bits in the wine which cause aging. Sunlight and oxygen do bad things to whiskey, but a sealed bottle kept out of the sun should basically be a time capsule for whiskey.
And finally, ageing is hugely dependent on climate. You can age a whiskey for years and years in Scotland. Try that in the southern US and you’ll have something completely undrinkable because the heat causes so much more interaction with the wood than the Scottish climate does.
So if someone offers you a 10 year old whiskey and they think they’re being impressive, just humor them, but also if their talking point is the age statement and not what went into the whiskey, or where it was made, or flavor notes, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
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