Photo Credit: Whisky and Wisdom
What is NAS whisky? How did it make it on the market and why is it so popular? NAS stands for No Age Statement. Essentially, when a bottle of whisky has a blend of various whiskies inside of varying ages, some old and some young, there are some distilleries that choose to leave the age of the youngest whisky off the bottle. Why the youngest whisky and not the oldest? Because in a blend, if you are going to put an age statement on the bottle you are meant to place the youngest age on the bottle. The short way of answering the second question posed above is that over time, especially since the 1980s, it has become more and more fashionable to drink older whiskies and this is generally because they are commonly considered to have a more in depth and complex flavour profiles as compared to their younger counterparts.
I’m going to pause for a moment here to take a break and I’d like you to read something special and important, the Producer’s Tasting Notes for the Lagavulin 8 Year Old (reference: The Whisky Exchange). Have a peek between the quotation marks and while you’re reading I’d like you to ask yourself if this sounds like a simple or a complex whisky. We will revisit this question at the end of the quote:
“Nose: Immediately quite soft with clean, fresh notes, faint hints of milk chocolate and lemon and then developing fragrant tea-scented smoke alongside nose-drying, maritime aromas, with subtle cereal. A prickliness seen earlier now develops, while the trademark Lagavulin dryness emerges as fresh newsprint. Softly sooty. Softer, fuller and more rounded with water: it’s not hugely fruity but there’s just a trace of red berry preserve, perhaps, beneath the smokiness, which comes sharply into focus.
Body: Light, growing pleasantly oily.
Palate: A soothing light texture, with a magnificently full-on Lagavulin taste that’s somehow even bigger than you expect; sweet, smoky and warming, with a growing, smoky pungency, then dry, with more smoke. Charred, with minty, dark chocolate. Beautifully balanced mid-palate then salty, oven-charred baked potato skins and smoke. Water rounds things, the taste still mighty yet more succulent, sweeter, spicier and now tongue-tingling, mint-fresh and warming.
Finish: Lovely; clean, very long and smoky. Smoothly, subtle minted smoke surrounds chocolate tannins, leaving a late drying note to emerge in time. It’s warming, soft and still smoky with water, not as long or intense now, yet still leaving the palate dry as sweet smoke lingers on the breath.”
Right off the bat, let’s step back and review something tangible. That was three small paragraphs of tasting notes. Three paragraphs. Anything that warrants three paragraphs is quite clearly complex regardless of the subject at hand and therefore we may conclude that this relatively “young” eight year old whisky is rather complex indeed. Therefore, if this whisky is young and complex and older whiskies are complex then why are distilleries charging more for older whiskies?
Before I respond to that question I want to take you on a short journey. Imagine yourself in the cellar of a distillery and you’re the Master Distiller. You’ve spent literally decades working your way up to your position and your knowledge of chemical processes and your experience is staggering. You truly are a master. Imagine you’re surrounded by hundreds or thousands of barrels/casks of whisky and you are personally responsible for ensuring the superior quality and excellence of each one. You understand that the longer a whisky sits in a barrel the higher the odds are that it could spoil due to the influence of tannins. You know that the balance of flavours must be exact. You know there’s pressure on you to perform at your peak and that you must produce a winning batch of whisky that both award judges and consumers will come to love and enjoy for years. Perhaps, it’s a common blend so you know the batch needs to taste the same every time. Bottom line, you’ve got to get it right! Do you see the picture I’m painting? Why do we really pay more for longer aged whisky? There’s two reasons: they’re harder to make and only the experienced Master Distillers are going to get them right each time. In essence, we are paying for time and experience, but not necessarily “complexity.”
Some of you might argue that a whisky which has been aged longer is more complex because of its deeper flavour, its richness. Granted, there is certainly room for that argument. However, I do not believe that complexity alone is the defining factor which determines a whisky’s worth. After all, most whiskies are technically speaking rather complex, containing thousands, perhaps millions of flavour inducing organic molecules. Therefore, complexity alone should not and ultimately does not determine a whisky’s value or monetary worth. I would tend to argue that it is predominantly the depth of knowledge and the time and experience which goes into the making of a whisky which warrants its inherent value and thus its potential monetary worth on the market.
One thing I respect about the Lagavulin brand, and this is meant as an example as I’m sure other brands do this too, is that they price their whisky not by year but by its true worth. How exactly they determine a bottle’s true worth is beyond my scope, that would be up to their marketing team, but one thing I sincerely appreciate is that their pricing scheme reflects their value and respect for their younger whiskies as well as their older ones. I believe this distillery is setting an example to be followed on the market.
While it is likely that NAS is a firmly entrenched staple item on the whisky market and will stick around for decades to come, indefinitely perhaps, there is absolutely room for younger whisky to reclaim its place as a heavy hitter in the whisky world. Cheers to the distilleries that remind us of this important truth. Bonus! Younger whiskies have less wood influence so you can really get a good sense of a distillery’s character by trying the younger whiskies, too. Sláinte
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