Does older bourbon always taste better?

Extended barrel time isn't a straight line toward better whiskey. In the first several years, aging mellows the sharp, grainy edges of new-make spirit and builds color, caramel, and oak character. But that trade keeps going even after it stops helping: past a certain point, the wood starts to dominate, and the whiskey can turn bitter, dry, or "over-oaked"; tasting more like the barrel than the grain that went into it.

Where a barrel sits matters as much as how long it sits there. A barrel on a hot top floor extracts flavor from the wood much faster than one on a cool bottom floor, so a 6-year top-floor barrel and a 12-year bottom-floor barrel can land in a similar place. "Older" isn't a single clock; it's shorthand for a lot of variables a distiller is actually managing.