We don’t mature anything from new-make in sherry wood — the extraction rate is too aggressive and the oak too different in structure from American white oak to control that way. Instead these butts take a spirit that has already spent eight or more years in a first-fill bourbon barrel and finish it for twelve to twenty-four months, layering dried-fruit and dark-chocolate notes over a base that’s already built.
The butts themselves come from a cooperage in Jerez seasoned with genuine Oloroso for two and a half years before we ever see them — not sherry-treated staves assembled after the fact, which extract a flatter, more one-note sweetness than a properly seasoned cask. We track each butt’s fill and dump date individually; past about twenty-four months the wood tannin starts to dominate the fruit character rather than support it.
