HACKING THE WHISKY AGEING PROCESS

In 2013, Cleveland Whiskey made headlines for making bourbon in six days. The first expression to reach consumers actually took about six months from start to finish – still, a veritable sprint compared to the traditional technique.

Cleveland Whiskey’s secret is a pressurised rapid ‘ageing’ method that CEO Tom Lix began developing in 2007. The production includes three months to three years in oak barrels plus the finishing process, which takes about a day. Inside stainless-steel tanks, variations in pressure force the bourbon in and out of finishing woods to quickly extract flavours from black cherry, maple, or apple – woods that would not make good ageing barrels.

Lix’s team isn’t alone. Los Angeles’s

Lost Spirits relies on light and heat to speed natural chemical reactions. Other distilleries favour sonic ageing, where loud bass-heavy music is supposed to speed up maturation.

Sceptics of these production methods abound, but Lix isn’t deterred. The way he sees it, the hype around older bourbon is fuelled by marketing and the reality that there hadn’t been a faster way to make it until more recently. ‘The metrics are changing,’ he says. ‘All that matters is taste.’