Accelerated ageing is the ‘future’ of spirits

Technology that speeds up the maturation process of brown spirits will become the “future” of the industry, claims the founder of Lost Spirits, who also confirms a number of high ranking drinks executives sit on the board of his company.

Since 2010, US-based producer Lost Spirits has been refining a process that rapidly accelerates the ageing process of spirits such as whiskey, rum and Tequila.

Co-founded by Bryan Davis, Lost Spirits publicly unveiled its Thea One reactor last year. The technology forces a chemical composition within new make liquid that it is near-identical to that of an aged variety.

As such, Lost Spirits claims it is able to produce a liquid with the same molecular structure as a 20-year-old rum in a matter of days.

Speaking to The Spirits Business, Davis said: “We haven’t made something approximating the flavour of an aged rum – we actually made an aged rum. Our technology is the only one that can stand up to forensic chemistry as there’s a big difference between just replacing parts of the process with creating a molecule-by-molecule map.”

Davis claims that the reactor allows distillers to make “significant” financial savings as they could “respond to changes in the market quickly” and get their product to retail in an extremely short space of time.

Furthermore, the angel’s share that evaporates during maturation would reduce from 2%-10% each year to 0%.

However, Davis believes financial saving is not the primary benefit of the Thea One reactor. “We can have more fun this way as opposed to simply being cheaper and faster,” he said. “Our technology gives us ultimate control over spirits maturation.”

Executive influence

For the first time, Davis confirmed that three key spirits executives sit on the board of Lost Spirits: Todd Martin, founder of investment firm Spirits Capital Partners and former Allied Domecq executive; Chester Brandes, founding president of Imperial Brands; and Mats Andersson; former head of business development at Vin & Sprit.

Following conversations with craft distillers and large spirits groups – many of which Lost Spirits claims to have research contracts with – David said his company has changed direction.

Lost Spirits initially planned to lease its technology under license, but will now partner with select producers, relocating its lab and HQ from Silicon Valley to the Rational Spirits distillery in Charleston.

The group will create products in collaboration with Rational Spirits and also Rattleback Rye, an independent whiskey company.

“In the future, this will most likely be how we age spirits, decades and decades from now, because the cat is already out the bag,” continued Davis. “But we are not driving this in a combative way with the industry – we want to do it with them rather than against them.

“I guess we are like micro-gastronomy breathing new life into a conservative industry. We want to ask lots of interesting questions that haven’t been asked before.”

For more information on Lost Spirits and rapid ageing methods in spirits, see the August issue of The Spirits Business magazine, out now.