Garden & Gun Article on Julian Van Winkle

[MacinJosh]

For what it's worth, I thought it was a nice article.

No Earth-shattering revelations or X-Files-like conspiracies.....just an entertaining article and a nice piece of journalism. It was well written.

[CoMobourbon]

Yawn. This would have been a much better article if it had written by BarrelChar.

YES.

I have to read that version NOW. Come on Senor Char!

[Tucker]

Here 'tis...

http://gardenandgun.com/article/julian-p-van-winkle

[cowdery]

Enjoyed the pictures of the Van Winkle Distillery. Looks a little like Buffalo Trace.

[p_elliott]

Very good article and thank you Tucker for making it a link.

[TradingBoiler]

Thanks for sharing. A fun read!

[tigerlam92]

"On a twenty-three-year-old barrel, the angels’ share is about fifty gallons out of the original fifty-three, which partly explains Van Winkle 23’s heart-stopping expense."

Wow. Is this accurate? That's a huge lost to factor for and planned.

0.9 * (0.95^22) * 53 gallons = 15.43 gallons

That's going be a happy angel in any case.

Cheers
--Hugh

[jburlowski]

I participated in a single barrel selection of PVW 23 a few years back. Yielded a whopping 35 bottles.

[soonami]

I participated in a single barrel selection of PVW 23 a few years back. Yielded a whopping 35 bottles.

So that barrel yielded about 7 gallons of bourbon.

"On a twenty-three-year-old barrel, the angels’ share is about fifty gallons out of the original fifty-three, which partly explains Van Winkle 23’s heart-stopping expense."

Wow. Is this accurate? That's a huge lost to factor for and planned.

0.9 * (0.95^22) * 53 gallons = 15.43 gallons

That's going be a happy angel in any case.

Cheers
--Hugh

My guess is that the numbers don't really reflect the actual evaporation rate. The first year, there's a lot of loss because the wood absorbs so much of the whiskey. Over time while the barrel is mostly full then evaporation should be pretty slow, but as the bourbon gets lower, the evaporation rate proportional to the amount of total bourbon in the barrel increases because surface area (bourbon barrel) is the same, but the volume of liquid inside is the same. It's possible that the evaporation rate might be 2-2.5 gallons a year (~5% at the original volume), but as the volume gets lower the percentage is higher.

[dgonano]

Don't forget the water added to bring the proof down to 95.6. So only 5 gallons were squeezed from barrel. When sb.com and KBS did three 23yr Pappy's back in 2007, the output in bottles was 57,93, 81.