In this article, we will try to advise about how to ensure the best preservation of our precious whisky bottles, whether they are open, unopened, or valuable antiques.
Let’s make one thing clear right away. If you have an open bottle of whisky in your bar cabinet and you notice an abnormal drop in the level, it is much better to follow your grandmother’s nocturnal movements than to accuse the cork of bad sealing…
Indeed, remember that whisky, once bottled, no longer matures. So, unlike wine, it will be sufficient to observe a few simple rules to ensure the best preservation of the bottle as soon as it enters the home:
Store the bottle in a place that is not too warm
Avoid direct contact with the sun’s rays; in fact, alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water (around 78 degrees) and a small glass cabinet can easily turn into a greenhouse with temperatures over 50 degrees.
Store the bottle in a dark place
Or at least, if you want to keep it in view, that it is not in direct contact with sunlight.
Store the bottle in a place that is not too humid
This is more to protect the label than the contents. The label is at risk of coming off or being ruined over time.
Store the bottle upright
Unlike wine, which needs to be lying down to keep the cork moist and thus ensure greater interaction with the outside world; wine is alive and maturing, whisky is still.
Keep bottles under lock and key
You don’t want to risk the usual granny accidentally opening a bottle of Glenfarclas 40 to make escalopes….
The above applies as long as the bottle is closed. Things get complicated once the bottle is opened, and the problems increase exponentially the more the whisky level drops.
It is difficult for a freshly opened bottle of whisky to be consumed in a few days or weeks, although anything can be! The problem with storing an open bottle is not so much evaporation as the contact of the spirit with the air, which in the long run will cause it to lose its alcohol content and aromas. As long as the bottle is above half its volume, there is no problem, but when it falls below half, there is nothing to do but sacrifice and accelerate its consumption. For example, we could use whisky in the kitchen to create some tasty and unusual dishes. We will soon come up with something on this subject.
Only collector’s bottles can suffer from excessive evaporation, especially very old bottles (early 1900s), in which the cork has now given way, or those from the 1970s and 1980s that used to have screw caps, which are extremely leaky. For these bottles, the only solution is to cover the neck of the bottle with transparent film to create the insulation that the cork can no longer guarantee.
Let us close by quickly mentioning an important but rather neglected fact: the storage of bottles in public places, in bars, where the bottles should in any case be consumed more quickly than at home and should therefore not run into storage problems. In reality, this is not always the case. Try to notice. In many bars, whisky bottles are stored on a shelf often placed right above the coffee machine, which is practically like an oven with the door open. In such a hot environment you get two negative effects: excessive evaporation and an excessively high serving temperature; if you remember we established that whisky is at its best around 15 degrees. If you happen to walk into one of these bars, therefore, avoid getting whisky, or give the unprepared managers a piece of advice!
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