Hit or miss, historic spirits really do taste different

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Name a better rebrand than the one from ‘old’ to ‘vintage’. Yes, I’m still coming to terms with the fact that fashion from my youth is now considered vintage, but we can’t deny that the movement towards reusing and recycling has been a net positive for society – less waste, of course, but also a chance for a new generation to discover and love items with a story, sometimes even for a reduced cost than buying new.

The same is true for vintage spirits: they provide a sense of time and place, of differing production methods and palates.

Owain Phillips worked for Australian Whisky Auctions for three years before moving to his current role as Whisky Encyclopedian at BAXUS, an online marketplace for buying, selling and trading rare spirits (he said spirits specialist would do, but why would I leave out such an excellent job title?). Owain’s job is authentication of the bottles, as much as this is possible. 

He started his career at Casa de Vinos, a South Melbourne treasure trove of unique bottles, in his early twenties and having been exposed to rare and old bottlings – but with the budget of a 22 year old – value was a driving factor in his personal purchases.

“I was seeing bottles of blended Scotch whisky from the 1950s and 1960s that had age statements and looked decent quality, and they were £30 or £40. I couldn’t afford to go out and buy expensive single malts or bourbons, but over time, as I tried more and compared them to modern bottlings I found that, in my opinion, vintage whisky is so much better crafted that even at a lower strength you get a better quality product overall.

The value proposition is more than just monetary for the true spirits enthusiast – there’s a curiosity factor there. “Everything from the basic chemistry of the product to the way it is marketed and packaged today is a very different thing,” says Owain.

At Goodwater in Northcote, our focus is American whiskey and my business partner Nate White knew that vintage comparisons would be the way to attract interest in the bigger, legacy distilleries. 

“My favourite thing is the surprise and delight element it brings to the guest experience, when you pull down a Jim Beam from the 1970s and talk to them about it,” says Nate. “They may be nervous about price given it is in an elaborate container [a key marketing point for Beam in that era was decorative decanters], but you get to tell them it's $8 for a half pour. It might not be excellent whiskey, but it's usually a first time experience, and it becomes less about the liquid in the bottle and more about good hospitality.”

Personally, I often find these vintage expressions more to my taste than some of the high alcohol, astringently oaked American whiskies du jour, and there are technical reasons for this. Nate and Owain both emphasise certain production changes, such as the fact that the wood used for barrels used to be much older; the average age of a tree used to be over 100 years before it was felled, today it is more likely to be between 40 and 60 years old. Older trees have a tighter wood grain, which means higher quantities of vanillin and lactones, which in turn means the whiskey quickly soaks up more of those vanilla, caramel and coconut notes. Also, kiln drying oak — so that it may be fashioned into barrels — only became widely used in the bourbon industry in the early 2000s. This process locks in tannin, as opposed to the previous standard of leaving it out in the elements for four years to season and leach out those tannins. 

“This leaves space in the whiskey for flavours that usually would be covered by more aggressive oak,” explains Nate.

Of course Scotch whisky has not been immune to the march of progress either. One of the fun things about drinks history is that it reflects the course of society, and the neo-liberalism of the 1980s saw everyone hustling for higher yields with the same equipment. Wild or small batch yeast strains, which created protein-dense and flavourful liquids, were abandoned for commercial strains and shorter fermentation times. Stills were moved from direct fire to steam heated, and Spain couldn’t keep up with Scotland’s demands for ex-sherry barrels so bourbon casks became more widely used.

Not all advancements are bad, of course, and regulations have tightened in most spirits categories over the years leading to a higher base standard. Owain bought around 40 miniatures of rum from the 1950s and 1970s, of which he says around three were palatable – the rest were overly adulterated and sugary as we’re now used to a more purist, additive free iteration of the spirit. Pre-prohibition American whiskies were often mixed with rum or neutral spirit.

You have to be open to a little hit and miss when delving into the world of vintage bottles. “You can never 100% authenticate a bottle until you’ve cracked it open,” says Owain. “You’re always taking a gamble that it is refilled or faked.

“Start affordable, find some brands that you like. Start with a brand you know — if you like Four Roses, for example, look for an older bottling and it gives you a good point of reference to get a comparison. 

“A lot of what we do in terms of dating, history, establishing that something is real is guesswork, or at least deductive work. You’re looking at alcohol percentage, importer labels, who owned what distillery at what point. People didn’t really care about documenting until fairly recently, we’re going through ledgers and trying to find out what we can – these people are all long dead, unfortunately. 

“It’s A plus B equals C, but we’re not even sure if C existed. We build a rule, a piece of history and then a book will be found that has completely contradictory information. Finding the bottles and the information feels like a treasure hunt.”

It's all about the story, at the end of the day. At Society Lounge Bar in Melbourne, they have a bar cart full of vintage spirits, vermouths and amari. You can have a 1960s Milano Torino or a 1970s Manhattan. I opted for the Bianco Negroni, combining 1960s Campari Cordial, a discontinued raspberry distillate liqueur, 1950s Suze and 1970s Gordons gin. The resultant drink is still bright and fresh, but much softer and more vanilla forward than the modern counterpart.

“I think the recipes are different,” says bar supervisor Riccardo Bortolin as he prepares my cocktail tableside. “They’re more hands on products, less mechanised.” While this experience will set you back ($105 to be exact), it's priceless in a way.

“[The Campari Cordial] is a bottle you can’t find any more,” says Ricardo. “When it’s finished, it’s finished.”

And this is the allure of vintage spirits.