Vintage whisky

Vintage whiskies are rare. Most whiskies whether they are single malts, grains or blended whiskies are made up of different casks of different ages. Your favourite 12 year old single malt will contain whiskies from the same distillery distilled over a few years with the youngest component being 12 years old. But sometimes you will see whiskies, almost always single malts, that come entirely from spirits distilled in a particular year. They may be from an individual cask or from a marriage of casks all distilled in that year. The important thing to note is the year in which the whisky was bottled as this will give you its age. So for example a whisky distilled in 1995 and bottled in 2010 will be 15 years old as whisky does not change once it has been taken out of a wooden cask and put in an inert container. Unlike with wine, you probably won’t see a huge variation in the taste of vintages, apart from some being younger and some older, but sometimes unusually warm and dry, or cold and wet weather at harvest can be detected in the finished product. What vintage whiskies are perfect for, however, is marking special occasions such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and other milestone events. Some whisky lovers even lay down a cask on the birth of a child so that the lucky child can enjoy a dram of vintage single cask whisky when they reach the age of majority.