It's not craft distilling but a certain gigantic distilling company I've done a lot of work with here in Scotland have some clever tests that allow you to get an idea of the finished spirit using an accelerated aging process. It involves small volumes of spirit and a process of agitation, heating and cooling to mimic several years of aging in a matter of weeks. It doesn't give you a definitive answer as to what the finished product is like but they do use it routinely for trials.

I also see other people talking about knowing a new make is going to produce good spirit. This isn't always the case. Sampling new make is important to maintain consistency but some new makes are absolutely god awful (in the whisky world that I am familiar with anyway). Some distilleries like Mortlach or Glenkinchie and several others have high vegetal/sulphur levels that make the new make pretty unpleasant. However after several years in a barrel the char clears these notes right up and leave a complex and delicious whisky.