Silicon Valley is aiming for whiskey, with a start-up that promises to age it on a large scale in days rather than years while retaining the same taste, color and aroma.
Bespoken Spirits was born from the imagination of two nerds from Menlo Park, California, home of Facebook. His accelerated alcohol aging process has raised nearly $3 million in funding. A bet that could pay off: a system that produces whiskey aged in just a few days could save the alcohol industry money more than 20 billion dollars a year.
Our sustainable approach helps customers go from idea to bottle in just days
Stu Aaron, co-founder of Bespoken Spirits
Instant taste tests
This accelerated ripening in version 2.0 will give spirits producers the opportunity to try combinations and tastes that they never would have tried before. The possibility of testing in a very short time a solution that would take years to obtain a counter-proof will allow you to be more daring and avoid economic damage.
The company says its proprietary technology “extracts the key elements of the barrel that enhance aroma, color and taste, managing critical chemical reactions… enabling whiskey aged for billions of bespoke recipes in days, not years.”
The whiskey is aged “instantly” using material science and data analytics to save customers years of time and up to 70% of their costs. This is no small feat: in the US state of Kentucky alone there are more than 9 million barrels of bourbon and other spirits.
And the barrel aging process creates dispersion: every year nearly 75 million liters of alcohol evaporate.
Whiskey aged in a short time: is it good?
The minimum time to produce an aged whiskey is 3 years. Most of its flavor comes from the oak barrels used during the maturation process. An obsolete, inaccurate, unpredictable, unsustainable and efficient process according to Martin Janousek, another founder of Bespoken Spirits.
We have reinvented the process with modern science and sustainable technology, producing the same natural scents of wood, toast and char. Aged whiskey and bourbon tailored with our method are already sold in stores and have even won competitions.
Martin Janousek, another founder of Bespoken Spirits.
Yes, ok, but what does it taste like? Despite the proclamations, there are those who (perhaps due to psychological resistance, perhaps not) disagree.
The critics' opinions are quite harsh, even if they are funny. “My first impression was the smell of rust and antiseptic, not the most inviting of starts,” says one. “It tastes plastic with a hint of banana bread. It's like biting into your afternoon snack and forgetting to unwrap the cellophane first,” adds another. “Drinking this was like sitting down to eat a cooled bowl of oatmeal with raisins.”
Not very good, and not good either.
