As a guy that has dabbled in the arts of turning yeast and horse's sweet feed into spirits, I can tell you that the aging process was stopped as soon as the liquid was removed from the cask, and bottled. It will still be one fine drink tho.
Kev- Tell your coworker that his ancestor ROCKED! Shackelton has been and always will be a hero to me. I have a copy of his journals "South" and a hardcover collectable of "Endurance". I have a few reprints from Frank Hurley.
For those that don't know, the Endurance entered the pack ice 7 Dec 1914, and became trapped in pack ice, in the Weddell Sea, 18 Jan, 1915. The Endurance broke up 27 Oct 1915. The crew lived with supplies from the wreck, until it sunk 21 Nov 1915. The entire crew lived on and rode the flows until 9 Apr 1916, when they used the surviving row boats to reach Elephant Isl. 6 men (including Shackelton) left Elephant Isl, 24 Apr 1916, in the row boat " James Caird" rigged for sail, and spent 16 days crossing 900 miles of Scotia Seas during gales and storms, to reach South Georgia Island 10 May 1916. They landed on the opposite side of the island from the whaling station at Grytviken. They climbed and hiked the unexplored mountains to reach the other side, with just the clothes on thier backs. Modern day mountain climbers use advanced climbing gear to do so. By the time Shackelton could return to Elephant Isl with a rescue ship 30 Aug 1916, the entire crew survived 22 months of brutal antarctic weather and elements, and did not lose a single man.
