Bottle ageing Whisky

[Kevin H]

Over the last couple of years I've started buying a few older expressions of favourite whiskies at auction and am wondering how bottle age affects them.

I know that the received wisdom is that spirit, unlike wine, doesn't age or develop once it is taken from the cask and put in bottle. However I've also read about the effects of old bottle age or glass ageing from those who regularly taste old bottles.

What are people's experience?

[opelfruit]

No aging in the bottle.

With older bottles the closures are not always great so you can get some oxidising of the spirit, if you see a lower fill level on an old bottle then it's going to have oxidised as the spirit has been able to evaporate out and air come in. It's not "aging" but it will effect the overall spirit.

Others may have more input but as far as I'm aware there isn't anything else that'll effect older bottles......of course, there is the idea of it tasting different (psychological effect) and there may have been changes over the years in production methods (direct fire stills, worm tube condensers, barley types, fermentation periods, wood policy etc) that make older bottles taste different to newer versions.
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"Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whisky is barely enough."

[Kevin H]

Certainly one of the main reasons for buying older expressions is to compare the differences between then to now, say a pre warrant Laphroaig 10 to one bottled today,

But what about chemical changes over long storage? In the past was glass as inert as it is today? Do the wood tannins soften as they do in wine? Does the phenolic content alter? Etc.