The 'Neck Pour' of a Whiskey Bottle Is a Myth, but Based on Real Science

Whether I’m checking a bottle rating on Distiller while shopping or scrolling r/bourbon reviews on my couch, I keep seeing some version of the phrase, “but it was a neck pour.” This qualifier tends to accompany descriptions of more expensive bottles that leave their new owners less than whelmed.

The phrase found me at home, too. A couple weeks ago, I was sitting down with a buddy to enjoy the spoils of his 40th birthday. He popped open a highly regarded solera whiskey that was smooth as butter, but surprisingly simple. “Eh, neck pour,” he said, swirling the glass and setting it down to rest. We returned to it an hour later and enjoyed it more, but after sampling a few intervening bottles, it’s tough to say what had changed more, the whiskey or our enthusiasm for another dram.

I began wondering if I’d been needlessly suffering through subpar first pours on fresh bottles all along—what a waste. So last week I reached out to a few whiskey experts that work behind bars and in labs to determine whether the neck pour is a real phenomenon.

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What Is a Neck Pour?

“The ‘neck pour’ is one of whiskey's biggest myths,” said Wayne Cafariella. He’s the creator behind @drinkwithwayne and runs a Fresh Pop Friday! series reviewing new bottles. If neck pours were an issue, he’d be tasting it. “[The myth] can easily be busted by flipping the bottle over and wetting the cork prior to opening a new bottle for the first time.”

“I’d chalk [the neck pour idea] up as a more sentimental and superstitious observation,” Jim Meehan, acclaimed bartender and author of Meehan’s Bartender’s Manual , told me. He was also the first of several to point out that whiskey spends years in an environment ripe for oxidation: a wood barrel. It leaves little potential for changes from the interaction between the spirit and oxygen by the time we pluck a bottle from a shelf and pop it open.

To that point, the neck pour does draw on a real phenomenon, said Thomas Collins , PhD, a Washington State University professor who studies the chemistry of wine and spirits. “Opening a bottle does introduce oxygen, but you’ll taste bigger differences by drinking it neat, with water, or on ice, than by leaving a bottle open for a month.”

A neck pour also assumes that master distillers, folks who have dedicated decades to fine tuning the liquids they send into the world, would send out bottles with a flawed first sip. “Distillers are experts, and if they thought you were having a subpar experience, they wouldn’t put it in a bottle,” explained Jonathan Adler, the beverage director at Shinji’s , home to NYC’s largest collection of Japanese whisky.

Instead of sating my curiosity, Adler’s point pushed me father down this rabbit hole, now wondering how distillers felt about neck pour claims.

“There is no technical, chemical, or other related answer that I have heard to explain the neck pour,” said Pat Heist, PhD, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Wilderness Trail Distillery . “My thoughts from the standpoint of a chemist, whiskey enthusiast, and expert are that [the first pour] is more about the mood, the pre-meditated expectations, the physiological state, and what the taster had to eat recently.”

I was even able to track down the common cause of neck pour claims: folks new to the whiskey game, said Bill Thomas, owner of revered D.C. whiskey temple Jack Rose Dining Saloon . “It’s fun to identify that whiskey is better when it breathes, but it’s an oversimplification.”

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How Long Should You Let Your Whiskey Rest?

While most folks I spoke to wouldn’t wait more than a few minutes to enjoy the first (or fourth) pour from a bottle, Thomas felt more strongly about the potential of time of oxygen to enhance the best whiskeys. “On certain drams, we tell people to order a second dram to start with while the other opens up. And we named a Willett [single barrel selection] Time Out, because we wanted it to sit for at least 20 minutes. When we do a cask strength tasting, we pour an hour prior to let the whiskey open up.”

Despite the neck pour being more superstition than science, Thomas thinks it's overall good for the whiskey world, because it introduces people to the idea that whiskey will change in a glass. “It gets folks into tasting as more of an intellectual pursuit.”

Thomas advised that if someone wants to get the most from a bottle, pour your dram and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes. “There’s nothing wrong with grabbing a first drink while waiting for the one you really want,” he added.