Author: Bourbon

When searching out a new bottle of whisky to try, what clues tip you off to its flavor? Style, of course—a single malt will taste very different from a bourbon. Whether Ireland, Canada, or another country or region, origin also has an impact on flavor. Maybe you also consider its age. If the whisky’s label says 12 years old, is that a guarantee of good flavor? There’s a lot more to flavor and quality than just years in a barrel, and an age statement provides only a sliver of information. Legally, a label can only state the age of the youngest whisky used in the final blend, but often that bottle contains much older liquid too. Master blenders have to achieve the same flavor profile with every batch, and not all whiskies mature at the same rate. So even when the label says 12 years old, chances are good that you’re getting some older whisky in there. And that’s why non-age statement (NAS) whiskies—bottles that say nothing about how old the whisky inside is—are worth tasting too. Without the constraint of an age statement, the master blender has the freedom to work with whiskies of all ages and create new flavor profiles that fall outside the expected ladder of numbers. Case in point: Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Decades, a non-age statement bourbon that blends whiskeys ranging in age from...