There comes a point in every whisky lover’s journey when he or she surveys the box/cabinet/shelf/underwear drawer in which his or her whisky collection is stored and wonders how long all those open bottles are going to keep. Anyone who enjoys wine at home has also faced this conundrum: Do I finish the bottle or save the last fifth for tomorrow? Will it still be any good?
You can relax, whisky lovers, because the wine people have it WAY worse. Not only do open bottles of wine deteriorate faster than potato salad at a summer barbeque, wine collectors also have to fret and worry and wring their hands over the sealed ones, because wine continues to age in the bottle. That means every bottle of wine has an implied “drink by” date. For some of the better (read: expensive) reds, this date can be well over a hundred years. For your average $15-$30 bottle, though, you’re probably looking at between three and ten years of life, depending on the varietal/blend. After this date (which is always a matter of guesswork or research) the wine starts to go downhill, losing its character and ‘punch’ – eventually becoming either vinegar (if bacteria-laden air has leaked into a deteriorated cork) or the liquid equivalent of those twenty-something year-old spice containers in your folks’ kitchen cabinets.
Whisky doesn’t do this. A properly sealed and stored bottle of whisky (even $15 swill) will taste the same in two-hundred years as it does today. Don’t believe me? Check this out. Whisky’s high alcohol content serves to preserve it indefinitely, and freezes all of its esters, congeners and volatile alcohols in suspended animation. While the whisky itself might last forever, the whisky market’s fickle nature and cyclical waning and waxing mean that its value won’t necessarily continue to increase. You can certainly put away whisky now for drinking at an undefined future time, but don’t expect your collection to put your grandchildren through college. True whisky collecting requires a lot of research and a good sense of what modern releases will be rare and sought-after in the future. Just like collecting coins, stamps, and signed celebrity chef cookbooks – in fifty years there will be some valuable collections, and a lot of worthless ones.
How to Store Sealed Bottles
A sealed bottle of whisky has two enemies: light and temperature. Light and wide temperature fluctuations both serve to catalyze chemical reactions in volatile compounds and will eventually degrade those tasty esters and congeners in your whisky. An improperly-stored bottle of whisky will still be 40% ABV (or whatever it started at) after a decade or two, but it will taste like you spent $15 on it. Store your Stitzel-Weller bourbon, 2008 Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, and Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix away from light (especially direct sunlight) and somewhere the temperature doesn’t fluctuate (the South Pole works!). A basement, wine cellar, or root cellar is best for this, but any box, cabinet, or closet inside your air-conditioned home will be fine. I’d avoid the attic unless it’s insulated or finished. Non-air-conditioned storage units are also prone to large fluctuations in temperature – I’d avoid those too.
Unlike wine, whisky won’t be affected by constant freezing temperatures, vibrations, or the occasional round of show-and-tell for your jealous friends.
How to Store Opened Bottles
An opened bottle of whisky (stored away from light) with more than two-thirds of its contents remaining can be expected to remain unchanged for about one year. After that, oxygen begins to work its destructive magic and effectively rusts your whisky. Okay, it’s not rust, but it’s the same basic principal: oxygen readily binds with lots of chemical compounds – a process called oxidation – turning them into other compounds. Add oxygen to copper and you get copper oxide, that green crusty stuff on old pennies. Add oxygen to iron, and you get iron oxide (rust), which is red-brown and crumbly. Add oxygen to whisky and you get whisky oxide… just kidding. You get lots of compounds that don’t taste like they used to. The more contact the air has with the whisky, the more oxidation occurs. This means the more air (or headspace) in your bottle, the more oxidation happens. Luckily, the process is slow, so an inch of headspace will not be detectable by your taste buds for a year or so. If 75% of the bottle is air, though, you’ll probably notice a degradation in quality after as little as a month. To see (taste?) this in action for yourself, leave a half glass of whisky out overnight and try it in the morning. Yuck.
A good rule of thumb in whisky circles is to invite some friends over to enjoy a bottle when it hits the one-third mark. You’ll get a lot more enjoyment out of that third of a bottle by sharing it now than you will by miser-ing it away until it turns flat and tasteless. An alternative, if you must be miserly, is to funnel that remaining whisky into smaller glass bottles with good seals (I like the 2- or 4-oz brown glass bottles here, with the POLYSEAL caps). This method isn’t foolproof, as some oxidation will have already begun, but you can definitely extend the whisky’s life this way. Another method is to use an inert gas to provide a layer of protection between your remaining whisky and the oxygen in its headspace. I like this product [Sponsored Link]: Oenophilia Private Preserve Wine Preserver
Even if you’re plowing through your open bottles in a few weeks, this knowledge does have practical application. If you see a bottle of something rare and special at the bar – sitting on the highest shelf and covered in dust – make sure to ask how long it’s been open and check out how low the level is. If the bottle’s been there for years with most of it gone, I guarantee you it won’t taste nearly as special as it’s supposed to.
Good Article – thanks. Explains why the tiny amount of 1994 Lagavulin I hung on to 6 months was hardly worth it in the end. I’m sure I read somewhere that, unlike wine, you should stand your whiksy bottles up rather than laying them down. The idea being that if you lay it down the high alcohol content can start to damage the cork… have you heard this?
Thanks for the comment, WW. I had heard that, yes – I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I stand my bottles upright because it’s more convenient anyway.
Whisky bottle corks tend to be a little less tight than wine corks, in my experience, so I’d also worry about leaks in a horizontal position.
The upright position is ideal for opened whisky bottles because storing them horizontally would increase the surface area of the whisky within the bottle, thus hastening its oxidation.
I’m not much of a wine afficionado, but I assume that horizontal wine storage is the norm because wine is mostly stored unopened. This makes for more convenient storage with little additional degradation, if any.
Wine is stored on its side so the cork doesn’t dry out.
I assume you don’t store bottles of Scotch on the side because exposure to the cork will change the flavor profile.
Any suggestions on cabinets ..or the fixture or the shelves you or other readers use?
Maybe just a book shelf?
Hi Zeke,
I prefer a cabinet with a door, to prevent light from playing a role. I do keep a bottle or two out on a bookshelf or desktop if I know I’ll be drinking it all in relative short order (a few months). Once open, I always keep the bottles upright, since I don’t trust the “corks” to not leak when horizontal.
Someday I’d like a cabinet with electrically-darkenable glass, to both show off my collection and also keep it protected from light… but that’s kind of a pipe-dream.
Has anyone tried vacuum sealing wine corks to solve the oxygen issue?
It gets really warm at my house in the summer (hard to keep it below 80 during the daytime) so I started storing my Scotch upright in a wine refrigerator to keep it in the low-mid 60s. I’ve heard whisky is more tolerant to cold temperatures than warmer ones so I thought that was a good idea.
I’m sure I could store everything in my normal refrigerator as well but I wouldn’t have any room for food!
Regarding the Specialty Bottle glass bottles, is the polyseal cap you mention the same as the “Std Cap” described on the website? Thanks!
Hi Brett,
It looks like Specialty Bottle doesn’t list the Polyseal caps as an option anymore… you might try contacting the company to see if they still carry them. They used to be a drop-down option when adding bottles to your shopping cart, but that option is missing now.
I emailed them. They said the polyseal caps are not available online and you have to call to get them. Kinda inconvenient, but better than not having them at all.
Good to know. Thanks for checking Brett!
Hi,I would like to know in how time should a single malt bottle be consumed after opening it, in order to enjoy it’s taste,before oxidation hits your dram?
This depends on the amount of air (headspace) in the bottle. If the bottle is nearly full, it will last for more than a year. If the bottle is more than half full, I would try to consume it in 6 months or so. If the bottle is mostly empty, I would try to consume it within a month or two. Those are very rough estimates… you may not notice any oxidation for years. Suffice it to say that whisky (and other spirits) are very resilient and even if open for a long time will not “go bad” – even once oxidation sets in, it might take a long time to really affect the flavor. Cheers!
Thank you so much.Cheers!!
i opened a bottle of 45 year old chives regal blended scoth whisk 12 yrs. i need to replace it i was told it was worth 4,000 dollars. dose anyone know how much i owe foe a dumb mistake,i do kono it didnt tast like it was worth that when i was done thanks to someone.signed a real dumb ass
Hi Bonnie,
It’s a little difficult to tell what you’re asking – you opened a bottle of Chivas Regal 12-year that was made 45 years ago? A whisky that was 12 years old 45 years ago will still taste like a 12 year-old – whisky does not age in the bottle. I don’t know how to calculate the market price of “standard” blends that are antiques because of their bottling date, since usually those are worth too little to interest auction houses. Did the bottle that you opened have a date or year of bottling on it? I wouldn’t give anyone $4000 for that unless they can prove that it’s worth that much. I would guess that it’s worth about $30. If you’re talking about a bottle that says “45 years old” on it, however, that’s worth thousands because the liquid spent 45 years in a barrel, maturing.
hi i bout some bottles of whiske at the auchsone and some of the corks are slitley loos so do i lay them down so they will exspand yours fred
Hi Freddy,
If the auction house specializes in whisky or wine, you may want to ask them for advice. I’ve never dealt with a loose cork before. It’s true that wet corks expand, so I would try laying them down and keeping a close eye on them for a few days to detect any leaks.
Hi, I read an article a few years ago just as Glenfiddich Snow Phoenix started hitting the shelves. I stumbled across some good prices and stocked up with 12 bottles. I drank one, and gifted 2 others, so I still have 9 bottles left. I know cool and dark is the way to go, bowever, I’m still not sure if I should store the tins they came in vertically or horizontally. Any ideas?
Terry,
I would store them vertically, to reduce the risk that contact between the spirit and the cork could deteriorate the cork over time, and (more importantly) reduce the chance of a weak cork leading to a leak. I store all of my “long-term” bottles upright, and the collections I’ve seen online and in print do this as well. Cheers!
Thank you so much for the response, that’s exactly what I was looking for. This is definetly a “long-term” collection as I see it. Thanks again!
I was sitting at a bar last night and randomly the cork shot out of a bottle of templeton rye whiskey. It popped like a champagne cork landing two or three feet away from the shelf. The bottle had about one shot taken out. What would cause pressure to build up like this?
Jesse,
That’s crazy! I’ve never heard of that happening to a whisky. The only thing I can think of would be the buildup of CO2 caused by yeast/bacteria feeding on the residual sugar… although that’s pretty unlikely in a 40%+ ABV spirit. Usually fermentation of any kind stops around 13% alcohol, give or take. Maybe if the bottle was in direct sunlight it might have caused some evaporation that built up pressure behind the cork, but that’s a wild guess.
The place is rumored to be haunted. I’m just trying to figure out the most logical explanation. Fermentation was our guess, but that sounds unlikely.
Have there been any studies that verify a range in storeage of scotch- with the regard to temperatures lets say 30 degrees to 85 degrees [like the storeage in an attic] with effect the flavor of a scotch- with gradual changes of temperatures over several months – not a daily fluctuation- also can the cork change the flavor all that much- Im no expert but I would think air from a close to empty bottle and light would do far more damage to any whisky
Hi Gary,
I’m not aware of any such studies (I could only find hearsay and speculation when I researched online). You’re right that the damage done to a whisky is almost entirely due to the air (not so much the light) in a nearly empty bottle. For light to have a negative effect, the bottle would have to be exposed to strong sunlight for a long period of time – say in direct sunlight on a bar shelf for a year or two. The cork is only likely to effect a whisky (it’s very rare) if it’s infected with the bacteria that cause “corked” wine. I have heard that this can happen, but that it’s extremely rare. Also, since whisky is best stored vertically and there is little-to-no cork-whisky contact, it’s even less likely, even with a contaminated cork.
Thks for your quick reply I have a limited budget but have a rather large collection of scotch that cant be easily replaced I plan on keeping the bottles for many years-I enjoy sharing about 10 samples of different brands at one setting with a few very close friends giving them alittle of each- the collection is about one year old and this fall I kept them stored in my attic for security reasons (will be making a secured room or buy a safe soon) the temperature was between 25 to 60 they were stored on their side (a local scotch enthusiast told me it was better) they are now stored upright and will be moved before the hot summer-most people on here would probably say drink a buy one at a time but thats not me- my collection is getting quite impressive and cant be replaced easily- king george johnny walker- chivas regal royal salute- laphroaig 25- dalmore 18 and 28-glendroniach 33- ballatine 30- jury prophecy- highland 18- dewarts signature to name a few- at less then half full I will transfer them to smaller containers ( for the air reason) and keep them in a room that is made in my garage that is attached to my house probably 6 by 8 with three quarter plywood on both sides of the wall using 2 by 6 walls- the room will have no windows-thats my plan any other suggestions besides drink the scotch within a year-
Hi Gary,
Your plan sounds good – store the bottles upright, away from light, and protect them against very high temperatures (cold won’t hurt them). It’s a great idea to transfer the contents of half-empty bottles to smaller bottles – that will make a huge difference in longevity. You could also consider getting a “wine preserver” – an inert gas you spray into a bottle that protects the liquid from oxygen… I use one called “Private Preserve”, although it’s better for bottles that are opened rarely, since you lose the gas when you pour from the bottle. I personally keep about a dozen bottles open at once, and I try to finish them off within a month when they drop below 1/3 full (or within six months when they drop below 1/2 full).
Amrut Fusion is indeed a great whisky, and very much strong competition for scotch single malt. Their Portonova special release last year was also amazingly good.
Cheers!
One more comment I just purchased Amrut Single Malt Whisky made in India– all I can say is move over Scotland an India scotch is here– yes I know it cant be a scotch—- to be fair to Scotland it has imported peat barley and blended with India barley- I heard of this before and sure most of your readers are familiar with this- I just ran into it at a local shop- and would match this against any of the mentioned scotchs in my collection-
Oh it was the fusion malt (sorry i lead a sheltered life dont get out much)
I once read that to prevent oxidation occurring when storing for several years to wrap the bottle in Saran Wrap. Have you ever heard of and/or used this technique? Might this cause the label to bond to the plastic and rip the label? What are your thoughts on is? Thank you.
Hi TR,
The principal cause of oxidation is the air already inside of the bottle. Unless you have a faulty stopper, the plastic wrap won’t prevent the air inside the bottle from oxidizing the whisky. Again, the larger the headspace in the bottle, the more air is available to oxidize the spirit. If you do have a faulty (crumbling or ill-fitting) cork/stopper, the plastic wrap might be a good idea, if you can actually get it airtight… you might have to use plastic wrap AND tape… or just use another stopper that fits – I save a small basket full of various sized corks for this purpose. Cheers!
Hi , I currently live in Thailand, with day time temperature ~ 30 degree Celsius ( moving close to 40 in summer) wondering if I need a refrigerator cabinet ? Have some expensive bottles in my collection which I’ve collected and currently store it in a wooden cabinet away from any light. Any tips?
I don’t think you need to refrigerate the bottles (unlike wine, which will degrade quickly in high heat). The only concern I’d have is that if any of your bottles have imperfect stoppers or corks, they will evaporate more quickly in that heat, and you’ll lose some liquid (and increase oxidation) due to the exchange of vapor and hot air through the cork. 95% of your bottles will be unaffected, but one or two might have leaky corks. Of course, the same thing is likely to happen with bottles that are open, at a faster rate than would happen in an air-conditioned space.
If you have a cellar or any other kind of protected or air-conditioned space, I would relocate the bottles there to be safe (or at least the ones that are open or that you suspect of having air leakage). If you have a wine refrigerator with space in it, obviously that would work too, but I would not spend the money on a dedicated refrigeration unit.
Caveat: I do not collect whisky, and every unopened bottle in my collection will likely get drunk within 1 to 2 years, so I’m not an expert on proper long-term storage of whisky. I suggest asking your question on the whiskymag forum (Whisky Magazine), and the whiskywhiskywhisky forum. There are bound to be some collectors there who have more experience. Cheers!
Hi. I’m starting a whisky collection and i have a few opened bottles, my main concern isn’t taste its evaporation i was wanting to basically show the bottles off. I was wondering how long it would to take for about half a bottle to evaporate? Any ideas?
Hi Martin,
As an experiment, take two empty bottles and fill them each with a few inches of vodka. Seal one bottle with plastic wrap and tight rubber bands, and leave the other open. Mark the levels with a permanent marker and put them in your storage cabinet for a few weeks/months. Evaporation rates of vodka and whisky will be almost identical (with a slight variation due to ABV differences).
As long as the bottles are tightly closed, the evaporation should be minimal. To give you an idea of evaporation rates: In hot Kentucky rickhouses, annual loss to evaporation from barrels is between 4% and 10%, depending on temperature and barrel placement. In the much-colder Scotland, it’s around 1.5% to 2%. If you mentally compare a hot, breathable barrel to a room-temperature stoppered bottle, you should be able to rest easy.
I have mine in a closet in the basement so light is not an issue. Regarding temperature it fluctuates from 60F in coldest months to 80F in hottest months. The change in temperature is very gradualy and no more than 1 degree over 24 hours. Is that acceptable ?
Hi Alistair, that is absolutely fine. the kind of temperature fluctuations that would eventually damage whisky would be the kind you’d see with unprotected outdoor storage: changes from near-freezing to above 100 over the course of several years. This kind of treatment would both chemically affect the whisky, and would almost certainly degrade the cork or seal and let air in.