I’ve inherited a lot of old booze from my grandmother, and some now-quite-as-old booze from my dad. I’d taste any of it. I can’t imagine the orange wine is worth drinking, but it’s unlikely to hurt you. Unopened bottles of hard booze keep very well. Opened bottles sometimes deteriorate a bit, but mine have been okay, even the ancient Grand Marnier with a decaying cork. (I have decanted that into an old apple sauce bottle, and use it for cooking.)
This is true. Their distillery in Boston shut down in the 80’s and now the liquor is sold by another company using the brand label.
But it is still being sold under the Mr Boston name. I saw Mr Boston brandy and sloe gin being sold at a liquor store in Waukesha, Wisconsin about 3 weeks ago. Very bottom shelf stuff and not sold at many places.
Whiskey ages well; wine can too up to a point, but whiskey probably has the best shelf life.
I don’t believe that whiskey ages after it is out of the barrel like wine does. I think its more accurate to say is that it keeps well over time. I think what these people buying old bottles are doing is capturing long ago brewing techniques, not whiskey that improved over time.
That is correct. 12-year-old scotch is still 12-year-old scotch even if you drink it 20 years from now. And with wine, it depends on the wine. Most wines do not age well and are meant to be drunk within 2 years.
My impression was aging in whiskey had more to do with soaking up flavour from the wood. A lot of the establish companies are still using old techniques, so there isn’t some old style to be hunting for.
I didn’t say the phenomenon of buying old liquor made much sense, I couldn’t get into it myself.
But how the mash is prepared, the grains used and quality of said grains does vary over time and from crop to crop. Time in the barrel is key, but the source of the wood also varies with time.
So even long established distillers can have variations over long periods of time. If this were not so then then they wouldn’t need master distillers to make adjustments to bring batches up to expected standards. They could just follow a recipe.