To understand why, we need to look to the past. Until relatively recently, it was common for Spanish sherry to be shipped in wooden barrels. Once they arrived at their destination, they were emptied and bottled, and the remaining cask, infused with sherry, was repurposed to hold other things, like whisky.
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Then, in 1981, the Spanish government changed its export rules, banning the use of casks for shipping. The global supply of sherry barrels dried up overnight. The sherry industry still uses barrels for maturation, of course, but the solera system used in sherry production doesn’t really generate any extra barrels, since they’re never completely emptied. (Plus, by the time a barrel is retired from a solera, all of the aromatics have been leached from the wood years ago.)
Purists argue that these new sherry-seasoned casks are fundamentally different from the old shipping casks, and the new versions are more likely to generate that meaty, sulphur-y quality that bugs some people about sherry cask whisky. It’s quite possible they’re right. But for most of us, the opportunities to taste whiskies that went into cask before 1981 are few and far between, so that particular distinction remains, for the most part, an academic one.
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Editor’s note, 8/25/17: This story was updated to correct a reference to sherry cask producers using European oak. Most sherry seasoned casks for the whisky industry are made from American oak, not European oak.
