LOT ID: 0423-701
End Date : May 31 2023 08:10 PM
Macallan 1861 Replica. Bottled 2002. One of 17,000 bottles. 700ml. 42.7%. In presentation box with stopper.
Macallan acquired a very rare bottle of The Macallan 1861 from a private collection in 1998, and presented Bob Dalgarno, Whisky Maker, with the formidable challenge of replicating it.
"I drew a tiny sample from the bottle with a hypodermic syringe inserted through the long driven cork. It was surprisingly fresh and vibrant, clearly Macallan, but full of youthful vitality. Of course, we do not know the age at which it had been bottled, but judging from its golden colour and relative robustness in character, we suspect the whisky was matured in oak sherry casks from Spain.
"Together with my team of expert nosers, I began to comb through our warehouses of maturing casks searching for whisky which matched the profile. The problem was that every time we went back to the original it seemed to be revealing new layers of complexity: In the end we vatted together twenty-eight casks, at different ages, to achieve a balanced profile which, in our view, reflects the true character, aroma and flavour of this historic whisky. Bob Dalgarno, Whisky Maker at The Moralian Distles"
FILLING LEVEL
High Shoulder
The grandest of Speyside’s blue chip distilleries, Macallan was founded in 1824 and carved a reputation for luxury single malt whisky in the 1980s with string of 18-year-old and 25-year-old sherry-matured vintage single malts distilled in the 1960s and 1970s, building on the renown of earlier highly-regarded licensed bottlings by Gordon & MacPhail and Campbell, Hope and King.
In the early 2000s, as the supply and quality of even the best sherry casks declined dramatically, Macallan introduced their Fine Oak series, an initially controversial range of bottlings that included bourbon-matured spirit in the cask recipe. While the Fine Oak series took some time to find its audience, Macallan’s status as the top Speyside distillery - particularly at auction - was already well-established and today a legion of eager Macallan fans ensure that each new luxury bottling from the distillery sells out immediately on release.
Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.
This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.
| BID | DATE | TIME | |
|---|---|---|---|
| £410.00 | 31st May 2023 | 19:50 | |
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