Bottle conditioning bourbon and lessons from Taiwan Kinmen Kaoliang

[Erk Russel Reserve]

There has been on and off discussion of bourbon conditioning and improving while in bottles.  People dispute this by saying whisky doesn't age in bottles, but that is missing the point.  Distillate is a natural product that is not chemically inert.  It continues to evolve over time.  Is this one of the reasons why dusties seem so much better than current bottles?  I myself have noticed that EW BiB improved quite a bit over several years.  I bought a case around 2014 and each bottle was better than the last.  I opened about a bottle year.

 

Case in point, the Taiwan Kinmen Kaoliang market.  Kaoliang is type of sorghum based white spirit often called baiju.  Having had it a few times, it seems to be a distillate that includes both "heads" and "tails" so it is wildly flavorful with fusel oils.  Aging seems to smooth out some of the rough edges.  People buy both vintage Kaoliang aged in clay urns at the plant and vintage bottled Kaoliang.  The company even publishes a recommended price list (please see link below) for old bottles.  Clay urns allow oxidation somewhat akin to a barrel, but bottles are sealed just like whiskey (it looks like they switched to screw on caps around 2002):   

 

[白標]0.75L-58度金門高粱酒 - 老酒牌價 - 金門酒廠實業股份有限公司 (kkl.com.tw)

 

People buy and sell this stuff by the case and it is traded quite openly.  There are shops around Taipei (and even stands in markets) of traders in vintage spirits.  They are also happy to buy vintage cognac and scotch.  I think much of this goes to China as in the past they had no access to the international market, but are now well heeled.  As with vintage whisky, there is also an unscrupulous counterfeit market in Kaoliang. 

 

The Chinese take it for granted that older spirits are better and more valuable than newer, this would probably be a natural assumption they have had for centuries or even millennia.  This is beyond the idea that Austin Nichols and National used old style production techniques that are now lost.  That may be part of it but conditioning in a bottle is also a factor.