9 Whiskies That Weren’t Aged in a Traditional Barrel

Claims that whisky made using alternative technologies tastes as good as whisky made through traditional means deserve to be put to the test. We pitted several of these “tech” whiskies against similarly priced counterparts from mainstream and craft distillers, all tasted blind by members of the Whisky Advocate review staff. In the majority of cases, the tech whiskies averaged lower scores than the other whiskies in the flight. (The exception was Lost Spirits Abomination, which performed favorably even alongside some classic Islay malts.) Most of the time, though not always, the tasters were able to identify the alternatively aged whiskies,...