Skip to main content

To Drink or Not to Drink: Pro Tips for Collecting and Storing Whisk(e)y

how to store whiskey orphan barrel entrapment
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For many, collecting whisk(e)y is the grown-up version of collecting baseball cards or stamps. Ample care and time are taken to curate one’s collection — from traveling many miles and waiting in line for hours for special releases to buying and selling on the secondary market, whisk(e)y nerds do everything that baseball card aficionados do. Whisk(e)y collectors, though, have one advantage: If they decide to open their whiskies, they have the opportunity to get a little buzz or more. (No matter how hard you try, that Derek Jeter rookie card isn’t going to get you drunk.)

Recommended Videos

There are some collectors, though, that choose not to drink the whiskies they collect, opting instead to build out fantastic bars in their man caves to show off their hard-earned wares.

Is one path better than the other? Are there ways to preserve your whiskey that are dependent on the path you choose? To find out the truth, we sat down with Diageo Reserve’s national program director Ewan Morgan (a third-generation whisky man, himself) to find out about the different methods collecting whisk(e)y and how best to preserve it once you’ve got it.

how to store whiskey Ewan Morgan
Ewan Morgan, Nation Program Director for Diageo Reserve
Ewan Morgan, Diageo Reserve

So, the age-old question: to open or not to open. This, as you might expect, is a personal choice (to an extent). You can open your whiskies or you can leave them sealed up tight. It all depends on you, Morgan says.

Overall, one of the biggest things you need to know — whether you open the whiskey or not — is that where you store your whiskies matter.

“Sunlight can affect the taste of the liquid over time. It’s important to also keep your whiskey in a place where the temperature doesn’t fluctuate too drastically,” Morgan says. “So if you’ve got your bottle on display near a window that receives direct sunlight, you’d be advised to move it if you ever plan on drinking it.”

Where you store your whiskies matters most.

An illustration of this, he adds, is the custom crate that holds the Orphan Barrel Archive Collection. The wooden box comes with a panel that can be opened and folded back, revealing the six Orphan Barrel releases contained in the collection.

(The Orphan Barrel series, for those that haven’t heard of it, is a series of ultra-rare whiskies that brings to light lost and forgotten barrels. The newest release, Entrapment, is the first Canadian whisky in the series.)

If you’re of the camp that doesn’t open the bottles (and you’ve got a good place to store them), he says, you should be good to go on keeping the whiskey as long as you want.

“Collected whiskey will last as long as you keep it. Whiskey doesn’t expire or age once it is placed in the bottle. As long as you can keep the air out of the bottle and in a dark place, the whiskey can last you a lifetime,” Morgan says.

For those that open their whiskies — an option that is encouraged in certain cases, such as the Archive Collection, among many others — the question of whether or not it ever goes bad might come to mind from time to time.

orphan barrel series
Orphan Barrel
Orphan Barrel

You could be cleaning out a closet one day and come upon a dusty bottle that you completely forgot about (Picture it: It’s 2035 and you come across a bottle of this whisky, which you for some reason forgot about). Should you drink it? Would it still be good? On this, Morgan says that the shelf life of an open bottle depends on how much has already been consumed.

“The more liquid that is left in the bottle, the less air may enter to tamper with the quality. If stored properly, a bottle of more than halfway full whiskeys should last about a year opened. Under halfway empty, the life of your whiskey deteriorates faster. We have to protect these special liquids to ensure their quality remains intact until the last drop,” he says.

If you have a bottle that less than full, Morgan says, some of the ways you can prolong the life of the whiskey (and ones that professional collectors use) are by using glass beads or decanting the liquid into smaller glass bottles.

So whether you decide to open your special whiskies or not, ultimately, comes down to you. Do you want to save them, perhaps as an inheritance for a child or someone else, or do you want to open the special bottles you’ve got and create priceless memories from sharing your whiskies with others? We can’t answer that for you, but if you do decide to pick up Entrapment or any of the other Orphan Barrel bottles, please let us know  —we’d be happy to sit around and drink it with you.

Sam Slaughter
Sam Slaughter was the Food and Drink Editor for The Manual. Born and raised in New Jersey, he’s called the South home for…
The new brew routine: Why gut health is the future of coffee
Is your coffee good for your gut?
coffee bean

According to a recent survey by Danone America, 84% of Americans have become more interested in "functional" foods and products that support gut health. These changing wellness trends are affecting nearly every type of food and beverage product, and they've now made their way into your morning coffee mug as well. Popular coffee brand Bulletproof Coffee believes gut health is the future of coffee, adapting its product line to include science-based ingredients that transform a delicious cup of coffee into a gut-supporting beverage. I chatted with Stephanie Hoffman, Director of R&D and Quality at Bulletproof Coffee, to learn more about gut health and coffee.
Gut health in the wellness world

According to Hoffman, "Gut health has become a major focus not just in the wellness world, but in general, as people are recognizing its deep connection to energy, immunity, mood, and mental clarity." With this in mind, Bulletproof has adopted a mindset that your morning coffee should do more than wake you up.

Read more
Surprising ways to use ground coffee beyond your morning brew
Everything you can use ground coffee for, beyond your morning cup of joe
Coffee grounds in a plant

Perfectly described by Chris Smith, co-owner and founder of Ground Ops Roastery + Bakehouse, "The day doesn't truly begin until that first sip of coffee." Yet, according to Smith, the story of coffee extends far beyond its role as just a drink. Coffee has so many uses both inside and outside of the kitchen -- that most of us coffee drinkers fail even to acknowledge. From cooking with coffee grounds, such as in tenderizing meat, to using them as fertilizer for plants, consider these surprising uses for ground coffee.

Ground coffee uses in cooking and baking

Read more
The new Ninja Creami Swirl is a game-changer for high-protein summer treats
CreamiFit is a game-changer for high-protein, low-sugar snacks
Ninja creami swirl

Counting and tracking your macros is hard; and that's one thing every fitness and health junkie can agree on. During the summer, sticking to your nutrition plan can be even more challenging. After all, stopping for ice cream is a summertime event that evokes a bit of nostalgia for all of us.

Luckily, Ninja has dropped its newest version of the Ninja Creami, just in time for the summer: The Ninja Creami Swirl. The Ninja Creami Swirl is a total game-changer for health-conscious foodies, featuring special settings designed to create healthier-style ice cream and frozen treats. The Ninja Creami Swirl's specific CreamiFit setting is the perfect tool to whip up your high-protein, low-calorie snack or protein treat. Here's how it's changing the game this summer.
Trying the Ninja Creami Swirl

Read more