Are we finished with "finishes"?

[Kraaijeveld A.R.]

Hi David, all

 

>Finally a comment heard from one retailer 'I won't sell cask-finished
whiskies in my shop. How can you call it whisky if the cask they matured
it in had already matured something else?'

 

Interesting point of view .... guess he was selling exclusively new
make?

 

Maturing as a whole is a way to turn something essentially substandard
(new make) into something much nicer. So if that maturation process
involves more than one cask type, fine with me. So even if finishing is
used to turn a mediocre whisky into something that I enjoy, that's
absolutely fine with me. My enjoyment is the ultimate litmus test for
me; how many cask types that enjoyment is based on is not that
important. Doesn't mean I'd want to see only exotic-finished whiskies
but it does increase variety, adds extra dimensions to my whisky
enjoyment, etc. A poor finished whisky will not be around for long as
customers vote with their money (well, actually, it will be around for a
long time, gathering dust on shelves and then be snapped up by
collectors who don't care about the taste, but you get my meaning), but
the same goes for a poor matured-but-not-finished whisky. There are so
many good whiskies around that the poor ones can easily be ignored, be
they finished or not.

 

Bottom line for me is that I have no problem at all with finishing as
such. If it turns crap into something super, who would complain? Suppose
someone gives you a whisky for blind tasting, and you really really like
it. Then that person tells you it's first matured in a sherry cask, then
spent a year in a port pipe, after which half of it was poured into a
rum cask and the other half in a calvados cask for another year before
final marrying and bottling. Would you then not like it because of the
elaborate finishing regime? 

 

To each their own!

Lex 

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