15 June 2023— While NMHS Senior Staff Writer Shelley Reid is away for a few weeks this summer, we're sharing encore installments of Sea History Today. This week, we hope you enjoy this installment from 2019.

Seafaring Spirits

In the previous installment of Sea History Today, we discussed how a lot of foodstuffs didn’t fare well stored in barrels in the hold of sailing ships. But did you know that some wine and spirits actually improve over the course of a sea voyage?

Take Madeira wine, for example. This wine from the volcanic island of Madeira in Portugal was found to have improved in quality after months of sloshing in the hold of a ship at tropical temperatures. Portuguese winemakers in the 18th century then tried fortifying the wine—adding a measure of brandy to raise the alcohol content, thus extending the wine’s resistance to deterioration over time. Even after the practice of aging Madeira wine in warm rooms was adopted, a long sea voyage significantly enhanced the price the wine could command.

USS Constellation. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

The constant motion of a ship at sea can also be a boon to distilled spirits, when they are being aged in a wooden barrel—the movement maximizing exposure to the barrel’s interior surface. Some modern distilling projects have combined the romance of seafaring with the quest for unique flavors by sending their barrels to sea. In 2016 Maryland-based Tobacco Barn Distillery loaded four bourbon barrels into the hold of USS Constellation, docked in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. After a year in Constellation’s hold, rocking with the ship’s motion and undergoing a range in temperature from 9 to 101 degrees, the rum was bottled and sold at local venues, with a portion of the profits going to Historic Ships in Baltimore, guardian organization of Constellation, the US submarine Torsk, the US Coast Guard Cutter Taney,* and the Lightship Chesapeake, as well as the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. Meanwhile, a little to the North, Ironworks Distillery, based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, sent four barrels of rum in the barque Picton Castle on a circumnavigation of the globe; that rum is now available under the label Around the World Rum.

*Since the first publication of this installment, the vessel's name was changed. It is currently referred to as USCG Cutter 37.

The barque Picton Castle. Photo courtesy Picton Castle, via Wikimedia Commons.

In a more modern-day take on the practice, Jefferson’s Bourbon distillery, based in Crestwood, Kentucky, also ages its Ocean line of bourbon in barrels aboard the research vessel Ocearch, which studies marine species, particularly sharks. A portion of the proceeds from the Ocean bourbon goes to fund Ocearch’s important work.

Ocearch. Photo: Ami Meite for Ocearch.

A dark space, constant motion, extreme temperatures—these factors would make for an unpleasant journey for most of us. But innovators over the centuries have developed products that not only survive the journey, but become even better for having made it.

Sea History Today is written by Shelley Reid, NMHS senior staff writer. Past issues can be read online by clicking here.