Best macallan whiskey full#

Carbon dating at Oxford later confirmed the entire bottle contained a malt/grain blended whisky, likely from the 1970s, and definitely worth much, much less. That Said, Be Careful What You Pay for Macallan.Īt a hotel in Switzerland, writer Zhang Wei once paid $10,000 for a shot - a shot-of what was supposedly an 1878 bottle of Macallan. The good news: All that money went to a charity dedicated to providing safe drinking water for about 30,000 people. (If you want to get even smaller, you can find copper pot still Macallan decanters online, which are just… adorable.) A Bottle of Macallan Once Cost as Much as Going to College… Like, Three Times.Ī bottle of 1946 Macallan in a specially crafted crystal Lalique bottle sold at auction for $460,000 in April 2017, making it one of the most expensive whiskies ever sold, and/or the best/worst drunk decision ever. Adding small to small, Macallan uses a tiny “cut” (or portion) of the distillate - 16 percent of the alcohol they’re evaporating - to create the final product. The basic concept - and obvious success - of using smaller stills has to do with surface-area contact between alcohol and copper, increasing heat and creating more depth and richness in the distillate. Macallan whisky is famous for its self-described “curiously small stills,” among the smallest copper pot stills in the business.

Best macallan whiskey full#

It’s easy to make and full of warming flavors (orange, cinnamon, clove). If you don’t quite like the straight-up flavor of Scotch, you can try a cocktail, including this one created by Pete Canny of The Wayland in NYC. You don’t have to drink Scotch alone, while looking serious, or even wearing a monocle. Just FYI.) If You Don’t Want Straight Scotch, Macallan Makes a Tasty Cocktail. (In case you were wondering, some wine producers douse red wine with something called Mega Purple. Macallan is one of the few whisky producers that doesn’t use caramel coloring, which is why it seems to pack inordinate amounts of chewy fruit flavor despite a light color. Most of us don’t know that, and most of us - consciously or not - tend to judge a whisky’s depth by a color that’s artificially hued. There’s something hypnotic about the brown-sugary luster of whisky. Beyond introducing the essential Spanish sherry casks, Kemp, who was supposedly a bit of a difficult boss, is rumored to haunt the estate to this day. Roderick Kemp took over Macallan in 1892. are probably haunted, but Macallan’s flagship Easter Elchies estate might definitely be haunted. It’s been scientifically confirmed that most buildings in the U.K. The Beautiful Macallan Estate Is Definitely Haunted. The process is about 10 times more expensive than most oak-barrel production. He has them dried, shaped at a Spanish cooperage, and seasoned with Oloroso sherry, which contributes richness to the final product. Master of Wood Stuart Macpherson painstakingly sources Macallan’s 200,000-odd oak barrels from oak trees in the U.S. Yes, giggle for a second, but behind that title is easily one of the most important people behind Macallan’s success. Macallan is the only Scotch distillery that has its own Master of Wood. Again, use this information to intimidate your friends over drinks. Fillan, who brought Christianity to Scotland in the 8th century. It’s likely a combination of two Gaelic words: “Magh,” which means fertile ground or land, and “Ellan,” a reference to Irish monk St. Think fruitcake, but you actually like it, and it gets you drunk enough to endure family holidays. Speyside is an incredibly prolific subdivision of the Highlands region, roughly broken down into two types: lighter, heathery, grassy whiskies (like Macallan), versus richer, fruitier, sweeter whiskies. The basics of Speyside are pretty simple, and you can use them to buy whiskies according to your palate and intimidate your friends over drinks. That seemed to work out for them: Along with Glenfiddich and Glenlivet, Macallan makes up one third of the entire world’s single malt whisky market. Macallan was one of the first distilleries to recognize the marketability/flavor/general sexiness of single malt, which the company really started publicizing in the 1970s. It just means your malt whisky was made at one distillery. It’s easy to get confused, but the term “single malt” doesn’t mean a whisky was made in one barrel (though there is “single barrel” whisky). By 2013, the company announced plans to build a 100 million pound production facility. Reid started early, and small - the first whisky Macallan ever produced came out of a woodshed and just two pot stills. Alexander Reid, both a barley farmer and schoolteacher, founded The Macallan Distillery in 1824, a year after the Scottish Excise Act legalized distilling. Macallan Exists Because a Schoolteacher Wanted to Get You Sauced.