The penetration of liquid into the porous structure of the oak wooden casks is known as impregnation.

This is actually significantly more than the “less than shishim” amount that past poskim have previously assumed was in the barrels. Many, if not most, of the other distilleries also use sherry cask barrels to produce their whiskeys. Regardless, the Scottish distilleries take apart the barrels and rebuild them to standard sizes. They use wood from the Northern Galicia area of Spain and no one else is licensed to make it. (but don’t gulp too much because that averages to $1500 per half ounce gulp.) Macallan is the only distillery that is licensed to purchase significant numbers of barrels from cooperages. By international law and agreement, Sherry and Port may only be produced in Spain.īarrels are produced in something called “cooperages.” The Macallan distillery in Scotland is considered the Rolls Royce of Scotch whiskey – with whiskeys that range up to $30,000 a bottle. The Sherry casks come from Spain and are generally 225-250 liters. The American standard barrel is approximately 53 gallons. The mechanical engineering issue is that in each 220-225 litre barrel that is used to produce scotch whiskeys, there is an average of 12 liters of non-kosher wine that has been absorbed into the barrel itself. This author believes that after the mechanical engineering discovery is discussed, many in the kashrus industry might re-think the approved category. They do print the list as a public service. No kashrus agency makes money off of the latter two categories.

Some are “not recommended” and some are “approved.” The OU and the Star K, believe it or not, have some different rulings as to which scotch whiskeys are not recommended and which ones are approved. There are three categories of scotch whiskeys from the perspective of Kashrus: CERTIFIED, NOT RECOMMENDED, AND APPROVED. There is much more non-kosher wine in the barrels than we had previously thought.īut let’s go back to the beginning. The essence of the article is that we have perhaps been making a huge and incorrect assumption in regard to the sherry casks in which many hard alcohols are aged.

1980 macallan whiskey.