Whiskey, having so few tannins, doesn’t have much chance for major evolutions in flavor, and that’s fine since a finished whiskey should taste how it tastes forever-or for as long as it lasts in your liquor cabinet.
Something too harshly tannic now might mellow over a few years, while you wait patiently and/or drink other, friendlier wine. Why do tannins matter? They can cause change in a bottle of wine over time, again for better or ill. Whiskey has no innate tannins, and only gets a scant offering from the barrel in which it ages. Wine has a lot more tannin content than whiskey (naturally occurring in the grape, borrowed from the barrel, etc.). “If you keep a 12 year old bottle for 100 years, it will always remain a 12 year old whisky.” The reasons whiskey remains basically the same while wine changes have to do with a couple factors: tannins and alcohol content. Generally speaking, though, and backed up by none other than the Scotch Whisky Association (whom we just assume are not to be messed with), whiskey, once bottled, is a finished product. Whiskey in a bottle that’s mostly air (since you’ve been enjoying it, you scoundrel) will oxidize, though much slower than wine. Whiskey, on the other hand, really won’t change much with exposure to oxygen-at least, in terms of the exposure it’ll get from being poured into another container and/or the slightly less airtight seal of a whiskey decanter (vs. For many reasons, it’ll be a confusing morning.) (Just imagine leaving your glass of Malbec unattended overnight and going back for a breakfast taste. Decanting theoretically allows a wine to “open up” through exposure to oxygen. And while just how much exposure is really required is still debated, it’s universally accepted that decanting will change a wine, for better or ill. Especially if you plan on drinking that whiskey anytime soon.ĭecanting wine serves a pretty specific, though still debated, function: removing sediment and encouraging oxidation. Like a tattoo nobody can see, it’s a choice you don’t have to make, but it also can’t do a ton of harm. But what about that decanter? Is it actually a good choice for whiskey? Sure, he might not have made the right choices on the Nikkei that day. You know the scene: an important-seeming dude in a suit, or Jack Donaghy, pours himself a glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter, possibly staring out the window while contemplating a recent building-swap, or whatever business people do.