Whiskey Age Statements Are More Important Than You Think
Age plays a major role in the spirit's flavor, because whiskeys are barrel-aged, which means they're kept in wooden barrels where they absorb the flavor of the wood. Typically, whiskey is aged in oak barrels, and younger whiskeys have sharper, stronger flavors while older whiskeys have richer, more subtle flavors.
Deciding on whiskey ages
There is a minimum and maximum amount of time that whiskey can age in its cask and keep a good flavor, and there are strict laws about whiskey aging in several countries including the United States. Modern U.S. whiskey laws can be traced back to President Howard Taft, who helped legally specify in 1909 that straight whiskey must be barrel aged for at least two years. This is still true today, and the youngest fermented grain spirit in the bottle must be at least two years old to legally be called whiskey. In the world of scotch whiskey, the minimum is three years.
There are different factors which all play a role in how much the distilled spirit draws flavor from the charred oak barrel (such as climate or the density of the barrel). It's common to see bourbon age statements ranging from about five to fifteen years, and somewhere in the middle of that range is often considered a sweet spot. If whiskey spends too long aging in its barrel, then it can take on too much of the wood's flavor, making it too bitter to be drinkable. Don't assume that aged whiskies are always fancier, because age is a sliding scale from "stronger alcohol flavor" to "stronger wood flavor."