Whisky matured on oloroso sherry casks and color / coloring

[Paul Dejong]

Hi all,

Since Ralf posted his question on American bourbon casks...
I would like to post a question regarding a nagging problem that has been
err...nagging me and a friend of mine for a couple of weeks now.
A friend of mine -who imports some whisky into belgium- wanted to take
things a bit further, and wanted to supply some of his own casks, to be
filled with new-make, to his friends in the industry. Since there have been
a couple of problems in getting good sherry-butts, he decided to go and
visit a number of bodega's in spain, in order to buy some casks.
Naturally he tasted some of the sherry produced in those bodega's...
When he asked for dark oloroso casks...the only thing he got, was raised
eyebrows... Seems that oloroso from Jerez, gets no darker (no matter how old
it gets) than  our "average" 40% (caramelised) marked house whisky (such as
the 10yo standard Macallan...)...thus, nowhere near as dark as the "dark
oloroso Ardbeg's" we know, or the black bowmore, or....

Before his trip, Our (hopefully) logical assumption was that the oloroso,
which this naturally very dark whisky, matured on... Had to be even
darker... Because we would find it very hard to understand that the maturing
whisky could end up being "mahogany" if the original oloroso was -at best- a
darkish brown...? 

If there is no oloroso that is virtually black (in Jerez)... What type of
casks did that dark whisky mature on?
(mind you, all the bodega's that were visited gave us the same answer...and
proved it! Jerez Oloroso is far from "almost black"  !! )

So that leads to my question: How can "oloroso" matured whisky end up being
nearly black, if the originating sherry is even lighter in colour than a
thorougly matured single barrel bourbon such as George T. Stagg...(and that
irrespective of age, and the sherry matured in a solera system)...

Possible answers:
1. since the names of the different types of sherry are a little bit
confusing... Could it be just a case of mistaken identity? The only 'black'
sherry he found in Jerez was Pedro Ximinez... Could oloroso be actually
Pedro X?
2. since Jerez is the only region my friend visited (the most logical choice
since sherry got its name from the region) ...and i assume sherry is not
exclusively made in Jerez, could it be that oloroso sherry is made elswhere
in spain (from different grapes?) to a much darker colour? And that those
butts did not originate in Jerez, but a different region?
3. somebody suggested it may have somethig to do with the evaporation...
(although I find that very unlikely, because i cannot believe it would
become that dark...)
4. maybe it has to do with the wood? Quercus alba is much lighter then
Quercus robur...  But nowadays most sherry is matured on quercus alba...and
my friend saw with his own eyes that european oak gives no more colour to
the sherry than the American white oak... So that seems unlikely to.
5 Could it be that the higher alcohol% extracts more colour from the wood?
I think so...but I doubt it would make that much difference...

Questions, questions, questions... Who can provide the answers?

Paul

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