Beer
Now Is the Time to Try Barley Wine
It’s a complex, distinctive style of beer that’s strong enough to age.
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A beer style is more nebulous than you might think. Unlike, say, bourbon, which must be aged in first-use charred oak barrels, and Scotch, which must be aged in oak for at least three years, an India pale ale or pilsner doesn’t have quite the same legal prerequisites.
The misleadingly dubbed “barley wine” (often marketed as "barleywine") gets its name from some of its wine-like characteristics: alcohol by volume that is often north of 12 percent and thus double or triple the strength of most beer. And, like wine, it has potential to age gracefully in the bottle—sometimes for multiple decades.