When you can't run, you crawl. And when you..

Whisky is developing in the bottle because of the contact with oxygen in the bottle - as long as the bottle is full this process is very slow; the higher the oxygen/air ratio is the faster the whisky changes. Theslow bottle aging can be seen inold bottles from the 60's and 70's - their quality often overshadows the newer bottlings of a distillery and one big factor is bottlesging as long as the whisky is good quality... A cork allows minor breathing as long as it is not sealed whereas the screwcap can seal the bottle tighter but the bottleaging will also happen because there is air in the bottle. In a nutshell whisky development doesn't stop as soon as its bottled - the process is just significantly slower and the influence is mainly from the oxygen without any caskimpact at all.

@maltster Thanks my friend. When I first got into alcohol many years ago, everything I ever heard at that time said that any alcohol in a bottle continued to age, abet at an extremely slow speed depending on how well sealed the bottle was. So when I started to research more and more into whisky and kept being told that it stopped aging once it was in a bottle I was EXTREMELY confused.

To find out I'm not crazy makes me quite happy and it makes me feel even better that my bottle shop man isn't crazy. He had a couple nice deals on Glenrothes vintage 1985 and 1991 so I was really hoping this would be a good thing! :D

And when you can't crawl, when you can't do that.../ You find someone to carry you.

Excellent episode of Firefly.

@michaelschout Is there any other kind of Firefly episode?

@michaelschout That's correct my friend!! In honor of you A) Identifying the series and B) finishing the quote a dram of Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix will be drunken in your honor!

@Maltster And in honor of your very awesome answer a dram of Shackleton's Replica will be drunk in your honor!

@Peatpete I have never seen anything Firefly that wasn't awesome and excellent my friend!!

@squidgyAsh, cheers to you and your shackleton´s. If you want to see "faster" development on whisky I posted a method I use some weeks ago in another discussion-you can split a bottle into four or five equal parts (e.g. 100ml) and aerate them in a large wine decanter - the first for 3 days, the next for 1 weeks, the third for 2 weeks and the 4tzh for 3+ weeks and fill them each in separate little bottles. Now comes the fun part - try each of your sample and compare them - you will be amazed with the differences. You should try the aerating with bolder/more robust types of whisky - cask strength/strong sherry or smoke etc.

@Peatpete and @SquidgyAsh, too true. It's a shame that Fox network really screwed it over.