Distillers Are Crafting Character With Alternative Woods

For centuries, oak has been the wood of choice for whiskey barrels, thanks to its combination of ideal structure—it’s sturdy yet pliable, and leak-proof—and the appealing flavors it imparts on a spirit. Whiskey (or whisky) styles like bourbon and scotch require the use of oak; it’s as integral an ingredient as grain or yeast, adding notes of vanilla, caramel, baking spice, and milk chocolate. Without oak, the flavors whiskey drinkers love simply wouldn’t exist. But there’s more to maturation than oak. Some distillers are employing alternative woods like cherry, cedar, chestnut, and many more to expand the sensory horizon of their whiskies. They’re moving beyond oak’s familiar sweetness-and-spice to a palette of flavors that can range far wider—and weirder.

“We want to go where no distillers have gone before, a bit like Star Trek.”
—Eric Ryan

“We want to go where no distillers have gone before, a bit like Star Trek,” says Eric Ryan, specialist in maturation and innovation for Method and Madness Irish whiskey, which has released offerings aged in acacia, cedar, two kinds of chestnut—French and Japanese—and more. “It’s about exploring new territories and flavors, and seeing what works really well and what works maybe not as well.”

Distillers in Ireland draw on long tradition when using oak alternatives, as the country’s requirements for whiskey dictate only that it be aged in wooden casks, without specifying oak. Elsewhere, in the United States and Japan, producers are working with alternative woods that are locally grown, often as part of a sustainability effort. In some cases, the wood isn’t even made into a cask, instead coming into contact with the whiskey as staves inserted into a barrel or tank.

Whatever form the maturation takes, the resulting whiskies often taste familiar but unplaceable—inhabiting an uncanny valley of wood and spirit that can be an exciting playground for cocktails, or simply sipping neat.

While oak’s properties are well-understood, trying out a new wood can be a shot in the dark in terms of both results and the aging process itself. A particular wood’s density and porosity can affect how quickly a spirit extracts flavor, its rate of evaporation (the loss referred to as “angels’ share”), and whether the barrel is prone to leaking.

“Porosity indicates how giving of flavor the cask will be,” Ryan explains, adding that some woods are so expressive, the whiskey can only spend a month or two in contact before it becomes overpowered. “When it comes to angels’ share you’re generally going to see very high losses.” For example, Irish whiskey aged in European oak casks might lose 3 percent of its volume in a year, while in more porous French chestnut, it’s 17 percent—and in Japanese cedar, 26 percent.

Ari Sussman, whiskey maker for Whiskey Jypsi and other brands, has worked with dozens of woods, from peach and juniper to balsa and sugar maple, bringing his background as both a bartender and scientist to the pursuit of novel flavor. He explains that extraction involves multiple wood compounds like tannins and lactones, not all of which might be desired in the final whiskey.

“Lactones extract more quickly than tannins,” he says. “If you’re trying to impart sweetness rather than spice, astringency, or structure, you might use a higher dosage rate of the wood to quickly extract lactones, and then remove it before tannins take over.” Sussman dials in to this hyper-specific extraction by using wood staves, rather than whole casks, which allows him to easily adjust surface area to volume ratios. “It’s really important to understand the extraction profile at different concentrations and different times,” he adds.

The Obscure Distillery in Los Angeles uses staves of American chestnut, coupled with an alternative aging technology, to create Rites of Fall rye whiskey. The American chestnut was almost wiped out in the early 20th century due to blight, but survives in small pockets. Distillery founder Théron Regnier works with the American Chestnut Foundation to get trimmings to use for Rites of Fall, donating 10 percent of bottle sales back to the nonprofit.

“It’s a reimagination of what rye can be,” Regnier says, noting apricot, citrus, and a distinctive nutty finish on the whiskey. “It’s really shocking.” At The Obscure Distillery, bar director Hope Ewing uses Rites of Fall in the Kingmaker cocktail (recipe below), which also features Suze, apricot liqueur, manzanilla sherry, and pineau des Charentes.

Without the familiar flavor profile of oak to lean on, it can be challenging to describe the notes that other woods impart.

Without the familiar flavor profile of oak to lean on, it can be challenging to describe the notes that other woods impart. Two Japanese koji whiskies, Ohishi and Takamine, use native cherry, or sakura, in finishing casks, and both are highly unique. Chris Uhde, Ohishi’s importer and blending advisor, struggles to describe the exact flavors that come from the wood. “It’s interesting in that ‘the snozzberries taste like snozzberries,’” he says. “It doesn’t taste like anything else. With any other cask type you can reference it to other flavors and this one is unique unto itself.”

To Jake Tennenbaum, national sales director for Takamine, the wood’s impact is akin to “snapping the little twigs at the end of a branch, where it’s this greener, aromatic wood.” Or, he says, the flavor is like the cherry tree’s buds “before they blossom: It’s a somewhat more floral character but not full-on perfumy, not quite as light. Just a little bit greener, a little bit more lush.”

Both Takamine and Ohishi have been popular as cocktail ingredients. Fête in Honolulu even acquired a single cask of Ohishi to pour neat and use in drinks like the Sunomono, a highball made with cucumber vinegar, ginger, and soda. Managing partner Chuck Bussler says he thinks of the cherry wood’s impact asakin to wine aged in amphora—a seamless marriage that elevates the underlying flavor of the whisky. “It’s allowing things to exhale, to be a living process, to create a unique flavor profile that stays within itself,” he says. “It’s not overdone.”

The range of woods being trialed is vast, and producers acknowledge that not every result works for everyone. Method and Madness released a whiskey aged in amburana, a Brazilian hardwood, that many people on the team loved, but Ryan says wasn’t to his taste. “It can be polarizing,” he says, but that’s part ofthe appeal of experimenting with oak alternatives. They offer whiskey drinkers a whole new world toexplore that’s totally set apart from the familiar.

“People take a new approach to the category through the lens of this particular wood,” Regnier says. “I’m here for it. I don’t care how you fall down the rabbit hole, I just enjoy pushing people into it.”

The post Distillers Are Crafting Character With Alternative Woods appeared first on Imbibe Magazine.