There’s a lot of overwrought marketing copy and high-caliber BS around cask-fill strength. Instead of piling on, let’s critically examine this variable in a way that’s more useful to distillers.
When you’re building a world-class spirit, there are numerous angles to consider. Selecting raw materials for virtually any spirit category can be a labyrinthine task—and processing and fermenting those materials, even more so. Then we get into the heady world of distillation, with all the techniques contained therein.
However, step into the realm of barrels, and you’re in for a Carrollian Wonderland in which many people are never quite sure which direction to take next, and most things are often not what they seem. Some decisions may be laid out for you—even dictated—seemingly removing your input and control from the equation entirely. The U.S. regulatory insistence on the use of charred new oak barrels for bourbon, for example, immediately comes to mind.
However, the choice of entry strength of the spirit into the cask is one in which—even here in the United States, where the legal maximum entry proof is 125 proof (62.5 percent ABV)—we have great latitude. So, let’s take control when and where we can.