Indies Rock: An Independent Bottle of a 1969 Macallan Pulls Out All the Stops
When is a Macallan not a Macallan… but really, it is a Macallan? When it’s a whisky distilled and (mostly) aged by The Macallan that’s had a second maturation and bottling by an independent bottler. In this case, the indie in question is Duncan Taylor, a company that’s been buying select casks from all over Scotland since 1938, creating their own blends and also bottling the best casks unadulterated, at cask strength without chill filtration. This cask, part of Duncan Taylor’s ongoing series “The Rarest Collection,” just happens to be a Macallan — cask No. 8376, to be precise, laid down in the Macallan warehouses on September 10, 1969. In Scotland that month, the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland was getting ready to recommend a major reorganization —it was a pretty slow news month. At the Macallan — and Duncan Taylor, for that matter — it was just another day of work, and coincidentally the beginning of a journey that would take more than half a century to complete.
Cask 8376
Cask 8376, an ex-bourbon barrel, rested at the Macallan for more than 47 years. Independent bottlers often take charge of warehousing and aging a cask as soon as it’s laid down, the whisky equivalent of adopting a baby at birth. But there are other cases, such as this one, where the distillery ages the cask on its property on behalf of the independent bottler. In December 2016, 8376 was moved to Duncan Taylor’s warehouse in Huntly and its contents re-racked, in a cask formerly containing Oloroso sherry. And there it stayed for another 5 1/2 years, until it was bottled by Duncan Taylor in July of 2022.
The word “bottle” hardly seems to do the packaging justice. The whisky (now known as The Macallan 52-Year-Old) is contained, shall we say, in a dagger-shaped crystal decanter with a pewter top/handle. It sports an embossed metal label with, I’m told, an “antique, chemical patina surface,” emblazoned with all the relevant details, including the proof — a very gentle 41.46% ABV, which shows that, depending on the climate and conditions, alcohol will indeed evaporate faster than water. The dagger/bottle is nestled inside a Scottish-made European oak cabinet with herringbone detailing, said to evoke old-style weapons cabinets.
Tasting Notes
This is all pretty gawdy stuff indeed, but what of the liquid inside? The nose is heavy on the malted barley, underpinned with aromas of vanilla and roasted hazelnuts. On the palate it’s dry and rather spicy for a relatively low-proof whisky. Rancio from the sherry casks, dry oak, raisins and sourdough bread predominate, complemented by hints of apricot and tropical fruit. While you can taste the sherry influence, it’s quite different from a typical (“classic,” if you will) Macallan. This is considered both a good and bad thing in the world of high-end whisky collecting. Serious collectors tend to prefer their whiskies entirely aged at, and bottled by, the distilleries where they were made. That often makes independent bottles relative bargains as a result. Not that £75,000 (about $92,000 given exchange rates as I write this) is cheap, but with only 228 bottles produced — a mere 11 for the US market — we’d likely be talking six figures and then some for this baby, were it an official Macallan release.
I also like independent bottles because of the differences from what a distillery typically produces. The Macallan is known for its sherry cask maturation. While it does use ex-bourbon barrels in the aging of some of its whiskies, you’d be hard pressed to find one bottled by the distillery that spent 46 of its 52 years in ex-bourbon. And I haven’t seen every Macallan-bottled whisky ever produced, but I can guarantee with certainty that they’ve never made a bottle shaped like a dagger before.
Interested? Just curious about who would stock such an object of extravagance? Shoot an email to info@shandimportllc.com — they’ll be happy, I’m sure, to tell you where to find a bottle. Want to see more exclusive bottlings of whiskey? Check out 12 Extravagant Whiskies.