Is older whisky ‘better’ than younger whisky? Nope. But it is different. Upon bottle-killing this incredible Vaults Collection Cask 95.38 Indian summer in a Japanese garden release, it made me reflect on what 38 years in a sherry butt offered to this distillate.
Older whisky is just simply older. It carries usually very different flavour profiles from the younger malts, many of which are hugely desirable and dangerously drinkable. Older whisky like this usually picks up notes of rich old furniture polish, dense old leather sofas, dusty bookshelves and more. But then there’s that incredible magic of still finding that interplay of the distillate character after that much time, and the uniqueness of the cask it comes from.
This particular cask had all the hallmarks of an older malt, but notes still of Waldorf salad, old sherry grapes, black truffles and woody delicate perfume. Most of that flavour is going to come from the alchemy and interplay between cask and spirit over a long period of maturation. It’s the magic of whisky itself. After all, if all older whisky all tasted alike, why would you bother? I certainly don’t want my older whisky to ONLY taste like the previous cask usage.
You’re essentially tasting something from another era of whisky production with anything from the Vaults Collection. A time long passed of production and cask usage that we’ll never see again. You’re nosing, drinking, and appreciating the closest thing to liquid art. You have to appreciate also just how FEW casks go the distance to be aged this long and not be over-oaked. Many whiskies can be under-oaked, many can be over-oaked.
It would be less than 1 in 100,000 casks that travel this kind of distance and be utterly perfect in age when bottled. Could this Cask 95.39 be a 40yo whisky instead of 38? What about a 35yo instead of 38? A whole rounded number as we’re used to on commercial bottlings certainly may make it more popular, but it was instead bottled when it was ready from our tasting panel. Not a moment too soon or too late.
That is essentially what the Vaults Collection range at SMWS celebrates: the rarest, oldest, and pieces of liquid art in a bottle, hand-picked from an expert tasting panel. So is it better than younger whisky? Objectively no, but subjectively, it might be. All in the eye of the beholder. A bit like asking is Paul Cézanne a greater artist than Damien Hirst?
But like all art gallery visits, eventually you have to go home. Farewell 95.39, and the beauty of a single cask. Cheers!
