Glenfiddich 18 Year Old

@GotOak91, that's a nice first single malt review, and I think that it's great that you started with the whisky that appealed to you, and not on some ladder prescribed by the ideas of others. It is also great that the whisky tasted very good to you. With bar samples you seldom know how long the bottles have been around and open. Sometimes a sample from a bar bottle will be so long oxidised that it is unrepresentative of the way the whisky usually tastes, and sometimes too much oxidation will lead the whisky from a bar to be downright off. If you get a lot of your first samples from bars and restaurants don't be surprised if you find some differences in new bottles of the same whiskies which you open and sample later. Happily you had a good experience here. A few months ago I had a sample of one of my favourite tequilas, Don Julio 1942, at an upscale restaurant. It was horrible, and tasted unlike any previous sample I had had of it. At the end of the evening I went to the bar section of the restaurant and observed that the bottle of Don Julio 1942 had its regular perch right in front of a very bright light bulb continually shining upon it. Clearly it had sustained too much continuous heat and the flavours went off. The important thing was that I already knew what this excellent product tasted like, so I knew that it was this sample which was off and not Don Julio 1942 Tequila. Had this been my first sample of the 1942 I would have drawn a very negative and inaccurate picture of it.

Thanks Victor, I understand you fully that's why I when I picked the Glenfiddich 18 it appeared to have the most in it so I took the gamble with the believed info that the bottle with the most in it would have to be relatively opened sooner (Not always the case though).

I expect that you are correct that choosing the bottle nearly full was in this case, and is, usually, but not always, a good bet to encounter the whisky in good condition. Even in the case of a long opened bottle, a relatively small air column above the spirit would require a much larger length of time to get substantial oxidation effects than would a much larger one.

This is true, the less surface area of the whisky exposed to the air trapped inside, the better.

Less surface area of oxygen exposure and, also very important I think, less total available oxygen in the bottle to circulate down and continue to react after the surface oxygen has already reacted with the spirit. I think that if you uncorked a new bottle and immediately recorked it that the rate and maybe total oxidation of that bottle would be very slow and minor, not only because the surface oxygen interface would be quite small, but also, and probably more importantly, there would be very little fresh unreacted oxygen in the bottle to react with the spirit.

I would agree to that recorking quickly would allow less oxygen into the bottle, given that a good cork is an almost air tight seal so like you said oxidation would be slowed down. Also with less surface area for the O2 to work with the better the bottle will be. It would almost be perfectly consistent for a little while. (As long as the variables that you can control stay controlled.)

I haven't tried the experiment, but I'll bet that if you de-corked and then re-corked a new bottle that the oxidation to follow would be mild to early-moderate, and then nearly completely arrested at some point because of the small amount of available oxygen having all been reacted and depleted. Put another way, no one expects much oxidation from the air in the new sealed bottle. What I am saying is that that one fresh dose of the same quantity of air with a resonable resealing doesn't seem to me likely to do a lot of oxidising. (Yes this would assume that the bottle is kept cool and out of sunlight)

After many years there would also be the Old Bottle Effect some members have discussed on Connosr, and also there would probably be some very small air leakage around the cork, which I expect would lead to a very slow progressive oxidation over a period of many years, the rate being dependent on the quality of the seal of the cork.

And, @GotOak91, thanks for carrying on this conversation with me. I consider these oxidation effects on whisky to be crucial in having a good understanding of a desirable but ever-changing beverage.

Also, appropos of Glenfiddich 18, this whisky gets a whole range of reception: big fans, "just ok" so-so reviews, and bashers. I am a fan.