Whiskey and Air

[zillah]

From my experience, although one will differ from one another, that after significant time of aeration either in the glass or the bottle a whiskey's nose begins to soften to more toasted, woody, vanilla like flavors.

[Restaurant man]

Follow up on my experiment:

I continued to open the half-filled bottle for a few seconds and agitate it about once a week. On this past Friday, my GF and I did a blind taste test. We opened the bottles (one of them for the first time) and each poured for the other one in two identical glasses (mine were Glencairns, hers snifters) with a mark on one glass so we could differentiate.

On the nose, glass 1 showed slightly more wood and alcohol and glass 2 was pure caramel/butterscotch.

On the palate, glass 1 showed more floral and fruity notes, and a bit more wood. Glass 2 was less lively, but with slightly rounder body, and showed less proof.

On the finish, glass 1 was spicier and longer, with some burn. Glass 2 was medium and mellow.

Glass 1 = no air time

Glass 2 = ~5 weeks air time

Overall, the two were very very similar. I found no evidence of the bottle with air time "opening up" or developing new flavors; I feel it just lost some bite and some of the fruitiness, which made the mellower characteristics come through more evidently.

Both of us were able to correctly guess which bottle was the one that had been open longer, but neither of them stood out as significantly "better" than the other.

[luther.r]

thanks for the experiemnt. i must ask if your palete was clean or if you "warmed it up" with a taste of some whiskey in advance. otherwise i would expect whiskey 1 to have a burn to it. first taste is always a little harsher as your palete gets used to it.

I'd had one small glass of 4R before I started the experiment. I also went back and forth several times between the two, with water in between.

I should note that I don't think my experiment is definitive by any means; I hope others will try something similar and report back!