There’s an old business joke that’s said a lot in the Napa Valley: How do you make a small fortune out of wine? Start with a large fortune.
The same applies to the production of whiskey. Equipment, barrels, and enough space to store them all can cost millions, money that you won’t get back until years later when the mind has matured. Meanwhile, as you age, you’ve lost 20 percent or more of your product to evaporation – what distillers wistfully refer to as “angel’s share”.
In other words, whiskey is ready to be chopped – at least according to Stuart Aaron and Martin Janousek. Bespoken Spirits of Menlo Park, Calif., Says they can make whiskey in just a few days by using heat and pressure to force alcohol in and out of small pieces of wood that give the spirit its distinctive taste and color.
“With modern materials science and data analysis, we can transform this legacy industry,” said Aaron.
Bespoken, whose first bottles hit stores last fall, joins a crowded field. Almost a dozen companies say they can accelerate or even avoid the aging process. Many have drawn huge investor attention: Endless West in San Francisco has raised nearly $ 13 million in funding since its inception in 2015, while Bespoken’s supporters include retired New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.
Some of these whiskeys are better than others. While some have won awards in liquor competitions, critics have largely dismissed them so far. But with whiskey sales climbing double-digit percentages each year and consumers – and investors – asking for more than distilleries can offer, companies like Bespoken may be here to stay.
The question is, where does overnight whiskey fit in a business built on tradition and prestige?
Almost as long as distilleries have been maturing spirits in barrels, people have been trying to speed up the process. Traditionally, aging means that the rise and fall of seasonal temperatures pushes whiskey into the wood of a barrel and then lets it out again, leaching out taste and color along the way. This process can take a few years to several decades.
Before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 enacted whiskey production regulations, “speeding up” often meant adding clear alcohol with caramel and soot, or worse, to make it taste old. But other techniques, developed in the late 19th century – such as heated warehouses that could recreate an entire quartet of seasons several times a year – were accepted and common even among established distilleries.
Over the past decade, some distilleries have used kegs that are much smaller than the standard 53 gallon size, which increases the surface area to volume ratio inside and thus the speed at which whiskey drains in and out of the wood .
Bespoken technology is, in a sense, the next step in this evolution. Instead of a full barrel, the company uses thousands of half-size pieces of wood, called “microstaves,” which it puts in a steel tank along with unaged or partially aged whiskey. By rapidly increasing and decreasing the pressure and heat inside the device, Mr. Aaron and Mr. Janousek calls the “activator” and pushes the whiskey in and out of the forest several times a day.
The process offers another advantage over and above speed. While a barrel is usually made entirely from the same type of wood, there are hundreds of types of micro staves, which vary depending on the type of tree and treatment, allowing Bespoken to create a nearly unlimited range of styles and flavors: the company claims to have 17 Billions of possible combinations to work with.
“Traditional distilleries are great at making one over and over again,” said Aaron. “We have already produced thousands.”
Another distillery, Los Angeles-based Lost Spirits, takes a similar approach and loads whiskey and wood into the reactor that its founder calls Bryan Davis. A key difference is the light: in addition to the fluctuations in heat, he bombarded the wood with intense light, which, in his opinion, revitalizes the molecular structure of the wood and helps create the complex aromas associated with mature spirits.
For Mr Davis, who used to make mostly whiskey before focusing on aged rum, the urge to manipulate aging is less about getting a product to market as quickly as possible than about being in control to take over a process that, in his opinion, also runs a lot to chance and nature.
“It’s about being able to move the needle so we can manipulate these flavor components,” he said. “I wanted to take control to create something interesting, like an artist’s medium.”
Other companies like Cleveland Whiskey and Green River Spirits use variations on the technologies used by Bespoken and Lost Spirits. Endless West does something completely different. By analyzing the molecular constituents of a whiskey, getting them from natural sources like plants and yeasts, and essentially infusing them into an alcohol base, the company claims it can reverse engineer not just bourbon or scotch, but any beverage, even wine.
The company says it could make the equivalent of a spirit that is five years old or more old overnight, opening up the possibility of recreating a 30-year-old Balvenie single malt scotch, for example, at a fraction of the retail price of $ 1,300. Bottles of its flagship whiskey Glyph cost around $ 40, while Bespoken’s bourbon costs around $ 35. Lost Spirits rum, only available at the distillery or online, costs around $ 40.
“I compare a lot of our work to digitizing music,” said Alec Lee, co-founder of Endless West, echoing the belief that these companies have adopted. “The digitization of music has greatly expanded the availability of great art to people. We want to see a world in which quality and availability are not in conflict. “
All three companies make competent, pleasant spirits, although each has its shortcomings.
Bespokens whiskey lacks the roundness of a conventionally matured spirit; There is a first hit from vanilla, caramel and wood spices, but no successor. The same applies to the rum from Lost Spirits, although it is much rougher and tumbling: Bottled at 61 percent alcohol, it is full of dark fruits and leather, a sinewy animal of a drink that still needs depth.
Endless West’s “molecular” whiskey is different. It’s pleasant enough to drink and goes well with a cocktail. But just like an Android They may have features that resemble ears, eyes, hands, and hair, although obviously they are not yet human. They contain many of the flavor components of a whiskey without actually tasting like whiskey.
Liquor experts tend to agree that whiskeys like this still have a long way to go before they can compete with traditional labels.
“From my analysis, someone can make a good product, but I don’t have the same complexity as an old bourbon, for example,” said Nancy Fraley, an experienced freelance blender who consults with dozen of liquor companies in the United States and Europe.
It may be that the technology like computer chess programs is both impressive and still in its infancy in the 1970s, and that it is only a matter of time before a whiskey from Endless West knocks out a bottle of Macallan in a taste test, just like that Deep Blue Computer defeated Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997.
But it may also be that it’s not about defeating the Macallan or its equivalent.
The upper end of the liquor market is huge and growing, but in terms of sheer volume, the real money still lies in lower shelf liquors, as well as flavored whiskeys and ready-to-drink canned cocktails – the kind of products where the nuances of a ghost don’t matter .
With that in mind, a whiskey like Bespoken doesn’t have to taste like the best bourbon to be successful. It just has to be better than the worst, at a competitive price.
And then there is the international market. As fast as US liquor sales are rising – according to Nielsen, they were 25.1 percent higher in 2020 than last year – they are nothing compared to the potential that some US and European companies see as trade barriers in countries like China and India often everything that stands between them and billions of consumers who are not familiar with American spirits but are dying to try them. If India dropped its barriers tomorrow, a company like Bespoken or Endless West that doesn’t have to age its products could serve consumers much faster than a traditional distillery.
This may be why several large distillation companies have also quietly dabbled in quick-aged whiskey. Edrington, the British company behind Scottish luxury brands like Macallan and Highland Park, owns Relativity, an American whiskey made using a process similar to Bespoken.
Mr. Aaron and Mr. Janousek from Bespoken also see an opportunity for tailor-made products – for example a company that wants to give its employees a unique gift. That possibility is one reason Mr. Jeter cited for his investment: Bespoken could be a boon to athletes and celebrities like him who want their own brand of liquor but don’t want the hassle of paying upfront for something that may not be ready is years. (Mr. Jeter declined to be interviewed for this article.)
It is also possible that as these companies develop their products, they taste less like a science fiction version of traditional whiskey than they do something completely different.
Lost Spirits’ Mr Davis said he had repeatedly turned down offers from investors because he was more interested in creating new and surprising flavors than in finding a way to beat established distilleries at their own game.
A decade ago, no one could have imagined how big the whiskey industry would get, and companies like Bespoken and Endless West seem more interested in occupying future markets than arguing over existing ones.
For a traditional whiskey mixer like Ms. Fraley, that’s more than okay.
“From what I’ve seen and tasted, I don’t see it mimicking a 20-year-old whiskey,” she said. “Does that mean it’s bad? Does it have a place in the market? Yes. Just as long as we’re clear it’s not the same. “
