THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

[T]hat antique bottle of Old Taylor, which was originally released in 1917, inspired Eaves -- whose background is in chemical engineering -- to use new technology to examine the bourbon's past. [...]

Susan Reigler, a bourbon historian and biologist, explains that in order for a distillate to be considered bourbon, it must meet a few basic requirements: the spirit has to be grain based; the mash bill (mix of grains) has to be 51 percent corn; it must be aged in new, charred-oak barrels; and it must not be introduced to the barrel at higher than 125 proof.

"Because of this, certainly, the process that goes on in the still is basically the same -- the chemistry is the same," says Reigler, who is also the author of The Bourbon Tasting Notebook. "And the compounds in the spirit are something that can be assessed."

Which is exactly what Eaves did.

"We decided to use a good old-fashioned 'GC' -- gas chromatography," she says.

Chromatography is a process used by scientists to separate a mixture of chemicals, in liquid or gas form, into components by running it over the surface of another substance, typically a liquid or solid. A visual example often used in classrooms is pouring a water droplet onto an ink mark on a piece of paper. The ink -- which is a liquid mixture of several dyes -- will separate on the paper into distinct, colored streaks.

In the case of the Old Taylor bourbon, the liquid was separated into different chemical compounds.

"Then we looked at these chemical compounds and from there, we were able to figure out what grains he was using, [and found] a yeast strain that has a similar flavor profile," Eaves says. "So that's how we went about it and constructed our recipe based on it, loosely. We didn't really want to replicate what he was making exactly, but take those flavor cues from the past, and then model our recipe around that."

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