We have listened many times to describe a person who gets better over the years like good wine. Others boast of treasuring a whisky that is, for example, 12 years old. What really happens to alcoholic drinks? Do they have an expiry date?

Expiry date of alcoholic beverages

It seems then, that the more years you have an alcoholic drink, the higher its quality will be. However, if you look at the beer cans or table wines that you can buy in the supermarkets you will notice that they are labelled with an expiry date.

Why does this happen? What is the difference between some alcoholic drinks and others?

The difference is in the degrees

The key to differentiating whether or not an alcoholic beverage expires is in the amount of alcohol it contains.

Low-grade drinks are required by law to have an expiration date on their packaging. These drinks include beer and cider.

Over time, these drinks can lose their taste and texture. They should not cause any harm, but it is advisable to respect the consumption dates marked.

The 10-degree rule

European regulations stipulate that drinks with an alcohol content of 10% or more by volume do not have to indicate an expiry date on their packaging. This is the case with whisky, rum, gin or tequila.

This is why some drinks have an expiration date and others do not.

It is true that sometimes we find a bottle of wine that has a strange taste, and someone tells us that the wine is in bad condition. This does not mean that the wine has expired. This phenomenon is related to conservation, as the wine must be correctly closed so that it is not affected by any external agent.