Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Death's Door White Whiskey.

Yesterday I told you about how U.S. law can magically turn vodka into whiskey.

Today I'm here to tell you about another peculiarity in the law. To be called whiskey a spirit must be distilled from grain and stored in oak containers, but the law doesn't say how long it has to be stored.

Now let's say you want to make an un-aged grain spirit called "white whiskey." Can you?

I'll let Kevin Erskine of The Scotch Blog explain the rest of it to you in this excellent post.

1 comment:

Delaware Phoenix said...

So Chuck, have you spoken with the Director of TTB regarding your SOI concerns?

Would it require an Act of Congress to change the SOI?

How do the majors feel about the SOI in their standard form?

Also, as you already know, if you put your new make whiskey in a used charred oak container or toasted oak container (ie wine barrel) you can call it whiskey or whiskey made from whiskey. So a new make rye whiskey distilled from a rye mash can only be called rye whiskey if it goes into a new, charred oak container.