Scotch

[Scott]

I'd likely try one. But I am betting that this would again prove the advice about bringing a dog with you when you drink a bad scotch...I mean a 3 year old in tins?

 

[jollyjacktar]

That did cross my mind too, but, what the hell I'd try it once at least for the experience.  I tried JW Blue label.  I'm glad I did it, but I won't actively seek it out again.

 

[a_majoor]

Real science applied to our favorite libation:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-01/how-scottish-scientists-re-created-hundred-year-old-whisky

How Scottish Scientists Re-Created a Hundred-Year-Old Whisky
Feature
Preserved in Antarctica since 1907, the Scotch that Ernest Shackleton drank is now available in stores
By Paul Adams Posted 01.04.2012 at 2:28 pm 26 Comments

The Rediscovered Bottles courtesy Whyte and Mackay

In 1907, Ernest Shackleton and crew set out on the ship Nimrod to visit Antarctica and, they hoped, the South Pole. The good news was, the entire party survived the trip, thanks in part to the Rare Old Highland Whisky they brought to the frozen continent. But the expedition was forced to evacuate in 1909, some 100 miles short of the Pole they sought. And, as winter ice encroached and the men hurried home, they left behind three cases of the choice whisky.

In 2007, just about a century later, the whisky was found, intact, at the expedition's hut at Cape Royds in Antarctica.

The stuff was made by Mackinlay & Co at the Glen Mhor distillery in 1896 or thereabouts. Mackinlay hasn't been an active brand for a while now, but the current owner of the Mackinlay name, Whyte and Mackay, obtained a few of the precious bottles and set out to do what any right-thinking Scot would do: first, taste the whisky; and second, attempt to analyze and re-create it. The result, a product called Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky, is, as of this writing, buyable in stores.

How was the re-creation carried out? Dr. James Pryde, chief chemist at Whyte and Mackay, subjected the samples to a comprehensive chemical analysis, in conjunction with a rigorous sensory analysis (that is, sniffing and tasting). Firstly, it was established that the alcoholic strength of the whisky was high enough that it very likely never froze over the years it spent interred in Antarctica. In winter, the hut reached a minimum temperature of -32.5°C, but, at 47 percent alcohol, the whisky remained liquid down to a couple of degrees cooler than that extreme. This eliminated what had been a significant source of concern about the quality of the sample, that decades of freezing and thawing had altered or ruined it. Carbon dating verified that the whisky did indeed date from the Shackleton era.
Syringe of Whisky: Instead of pulling the corks, the scientists drew whisky from the bottles through a sterile needle.  Journal of the Institute of Brewing

Phenol and related phenolic compounds show up in Scotch whiskies, giving them the unmistakable character that's referred to "peaty," because the flavor is introduced when the grain is exposed to peat smoke during the malting process. Chemical analysis revealed not only the quantity of phenolics in the Mackinlay -- surprisingly low, given that era's reputation for heavily peated malts -- but also the particular balance of compounds, which enabled the experts to pinpoint what region the peat used had likely come from. The answer? Orkney.

Similarly, analysis of the compounds that result from barrel-aging was able to finger the barrels in which the whisky was aged as ones made from American oak and probably used once before to age wine or sherry. Gas chromatograph olfactometry, in which the spirit is broken down into its volatile components and each of these smelled individually by experts, gave clues as to details of the fermentation and distilling process. The analysts write:

Other aromas detected by olfactometry and related to lactic acid bacterial growth were a stale solvent aroma of ethyl 2-butenoate, and sweet/ peaches, sweet/peaches/coriander leaf aroma at retention times of 15.4, 38.71 and 39.41 min respectively; the latter retention indices and descriptors agreeing with those published for γ- and δ-dodecalactones.

Armed with all this detail, Whyte and Mackay's master distiller, Richard Paterson, was able to delve into the wealth of warehoused casks and, with the help of his prodigious nose, blend a number of whiskies in exact proportions to replicate the Shackleton spirit. The re-creation, which is given a stint in sherry casks before bottling, includes some of the remaining whisky from the Glen Mhor distillery, which was demolished in 1986, supplemented with comparable liquor from nearby Dalmore. Benriach, Glenfarclas, and other Speyside whiskies lend their character, along with Balblair, Pulteney, and Jura.

The resulting blend was subjected to the same battery of chemical analysis as the original, and found to stack up quite comparably, their phenolics and esters finely matched.

Finally, minus the milliliters of whisky that had been carefully syringed out through their corks, the original bottles were returned from Scotland to the Shackleton expedition's hut, where they have been re-situated as part of the preserved environ by the Antarctic Heritage Trust.

For the complete details of the analysis of the Mackinlay whisky, a copy of the paper published by Dr. Pryde et al in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing is available here.

 

[BDTyre]

I didn't see it in my brief read of the article, but scotch does not age in the bottle. So as long as whatever vintage you have has been properly stored, it will still be fresh...that said...a 25 year old scotch from 1901 is still just a 25 year old scotch.  Regardless, I'm a sucker for vintage spirits...

 

[Rifleman62]

A bit more background to Thucydides post. This story was also a National Geographic Channel production on TV last year.

Video clips:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/expedition-week-1/ngc-shackletons-whiskey-recipe.html

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/expedition-week-1/ngc-shackletons-whiskey-recipe.html


Ernest Shackleton’s 100-year-old whisky

By Rebecca Priestley - NZ Listener - Published on October 29, 2011 | Issue 3729

http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/science/ernest-shackletons-100-year-old-whisky/

Scientists have helped replicate the Mackinlay's whisky found in Shackleton’s Antarctic hut.

When Ernest Shackleton was ordering provisions for his 1907 expedition to Antarctica, he made it clear that along with the requisite tins of herrings, mulligatawny soup, gooseberry jam and marmalade, he and his men required a supply of whisky. Not just any whisky, but a fine Highland malt. Twenty-five cases of it.

When Shackleton left Antarctica in 1909, after reaching 88° 23′ south – the closest anyone had been to the South Pole – he left some of that whisky behind. Now, thanks to an international team of conservators and chemists, we know what the whisky looked like and how it was made. And whisky-lovers willing to pay £100 (NZ$200) for a bottle of the replica whisky that went on sale last month will know just what it tasted like.

Shackleton’s whisky had been forgotten until 2006, when conservators from the Antarctic Heritage Trust (AHT) discovered the corners of five frozen crates beneath Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds. After three seasons during which conservators painstakingly chipped away at a century of ice accumulation in the crawl space beneath the hut, three of the crates labelled “Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Whisky” were removed last year. One crate was flown to Canterbury Museum to be thawed and examined. According to AHT conservator Lizzie Meek, it looked more like a 40kg block of ice than a crate of whisky.

“Over the years, water had gotten into the crate and filled up every nook and cranny and the whole thing was a big iceblock,” says Meek. The first sign that there were bottles inside came when the crate went through airport security at
Christchurch. “The bottles showed up on x-ray and we could clearly see liquid inside some of them.”

At Canterbury Museum, in a specially prepared cold room, the crate, which had spent 100 years at temperatures down to minus 40°C, was gradually brought up to 4°C to thaw. Once the ice, speckled with lumps of scoria, was gone, conservators recovered 11 bottles of whisky, carefully wrapped in tissue paper and protective straw. Meek describes them as being in “fantastic condition.”

The AHT decided that as well as preserving the whisky crates and bottles, it had an opportunity to find out more about what was inside them. The initial plan was for a small sample of liquid to be removed to find out more about historic whisky making, but when the current owner of Whyte & Mackay, the parent company of Mackinlay’s, got involved, the project took a grander turn. Three bottles of whisky were transported to Whyte & Mackay in Scotland for analysis by the distillery’s chemists. The bottles travelled in style, in a high-tech chilly bin filled with ice and gel packs, handcuffed to the arm of Whyte & Mackay master blender Richard Paterson, on the private jet of Whyte & Mackay owner Vijay Mallya.

In Scotland, chemists at Whyte & Mackay’s Invergordon distillery, with input from analysts at the Scotch Whisky Research Institute in Edinburgh, subjected the whisky to a battery of tests. Under sterile conditions, a sampling needle was passed through the cork of each bottle to remove a 100ml sample.

After the liquid was analysed for variables such as microbiology, alcohol levels, pH and acidity, samples were sent to outside laboratories for further analysis. After the mass spectrometers and gas and liquid chromotographs had done their work – including radiocarbon-dating the whisky and measuring levels of ethyl esters, phenols, cations, anions, sugars and metals – it was up to a panel of 15 expert “noses” from the Scotch Whisky Research Institute to profile the whisky’s flavour. Using a fixed vocabulary, they scored the whisky as having a balance of “peaty, mature woody, sweet, dried fruit and spicy” aromas. (That’s not too bad for a scale that also includes such less desirable descriptors as “goat” and “stagnant drains”.)

The first thing the analysts noted, in a paper recently published in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing, was how well the whisky was preserved. Whisky ages in the cask, not in the bottle, and temperatures at Cape Royds had preserved the whisky in its 1907 state. Analysis revealed a well-preserved malt whisky of 47.3% alcohol by volume – high enough to stop the alcohol freezing – made with water from Loch Ness and using peat from the Orkney Isles.

When distilled, whisky is clear, like gin, with the colour coming over time from the wooden barrels in which the spirit is aged. Analysis of compounds formed from the breakdown of lignins from the cask maturation of the whisky, along with the levels of fructose and sucrose, revealed a whisky matured for five to 10 years in sherry casks made from American Oak.

Paterson then attempted to reconstruct Shackleton’s 1907 whisky as a blend of modern whiskies. The result, according to whisky expert and writer Dave Broom, who has tasted both the 100-year-old whisky and the replica, is “bang on”. A percentage of global sales from the replica whisky goes to the AHT, which stands to raise $500,000 for Antarctic conservation projects. The bottles that travelled to Scotland will be back in New Zealand soon, and will be returned to the crate, which will be resealed and returned to its place in Antarctica, at Shackleton’s hut. As for the other two crates found beneath the hut, the label on the side says they are brandy, and word is they are next in line for conservation.