LOT ID: 0823-363
End Date : Oct 18 2023 08:00 PM
Macallan 1950. Handwritten Label. Bottled early 1980s under license by Gordon & MacPhail. 75cl. 43%. In wooden presentation box.
A wonderful old Macallan 1950 vintage bottled by Gordon & MacPhail around the turn of the 1980s. Several versions of this ‘Handwritten Label’ edition were originally bottled by or for the distillery’s licensed partners including Atkinson, Baldwin & Co. and Matthew Clark in the UK and distributors in France, Germany, Italy and Australia. The distillery subsequently took all official bottlings in-house soon after these vintage bottlings appeared.
The 1950 Macallan is equally impressive as the 1938 but with more delicate oils and softer fruit complexities and metallic notes in place of the earlier phenolic styles. These older Macallans are not being produced anymore and as the years go by they seem to be getting thinner and thinner in auction.
FILLING LEVEL
Into Neck
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.
Founded in Elgin as a merchant grocer and wine and spirits wholesaler in 1895, Gordon & MacPhail are one of the oldest independent whisky bottlers in Scotland. Co-founder James Gordon owned shares in Longmorn, Strathisla and Glen Grant, and Gordon & MacPhail were soon bottling officially licensed single malts from several distilleries and sending empty casks from their wine business to be filled with new make spirit and returned for maturation in their Elgin warehouses.
Gordon & MacPhail pioneered high strength single malts at 100 proof (57%) in the 1950s, and in 1968 the company launched Connoisseurs Choice, one of the first integrated ranges of small batch independent whisky bottlings. After finally becoming distillers themselves with the purchase of Benromach in 1993, in 2010 Gordon & MacPhail bottled the first 70-year-old single malt whisky (a Mortlach 1938) and in 2020 the company released the first ever 80-year-old whisky: Glenlivet 1940.
| BID | DATE | TIME | |
|---|---|---|---|
| £4,900.00 | 18th October 2023 | 19:32 | |
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