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4 years ago
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I’m no expert, but I’ll give this a shot.
Sherry, real, drinking-quality sherry, used to be exported in casks. Transport casks. These were the casks that were then used by the whisky industry to mature or finish their whiskies. In the early 1980s, Spain adopted new laws which required Sherry to be bottled in Spain. Meaning no more transport casks. The whisky industry tried treating casks with a sherry-like substance, a “cask conditioning agent”, called Paxarette, but it was banned by the Scotch Whisky Association in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Since the 1990s, “sherry casks” used by the whisky industry have almost never held actual, drinking-quality sherry. These casks are seasoned through a process known as envinado with a sherry that is usually discarded or made into sherry vinegar. Sherry makers don’t want heavy wood notes in their wines. These sherry-seasoned casks are (or were) treated with sulphur candles to sterilize the cask. And that’s where things get dicey. That sulphur can contaminate the cask and is pretty much impossible to get rid of.
This article explains it in more detail than I can. whiskynotes.be/sherry-casks-in-the-whisky-…
4 years ago 2Who liked this?
Also, some people are sulphur-blind (i.e. they can’t detect it...it’s genetic) so it’s a non-issue for those folks.
4 years ago 0
@OdysseusUnbound You explained it very well. I'll be reading that article soon...
4 years ago 1Who liked this?
For better or worse, I come from a Scotch drinking family. For my grandfather, it was Dewars and CR (along wtih Slivovitch and everything( else a Hungarian immigrant might have been hankering for), Then my uncle got into peat, sherry, and whatever SMWS bottles he picked up --before Afib stopped the party for him.(His abandoned collection was amazing, with lots of IB's.)
What occurs to me is that, after so many years of attending family whisky tastings, I never heard anything about sulfur sensitivity. Is bad sulphur a recent problem or did people just start making it the focus in reviews?
I'm reminded of the recent focus on gluten when people order food. Are we so much more enlightened now, or are these just trends?
That said, if I hear that whisky is sulphur heavily, I will not buy it. In any case, I'd b happy to hear what you all think.