In 2015 Macallan made the controversial action of releasing a variety of no-age-statement whiskies to change a variety of their preferred drams. The Great Oak range disappeared almost in its entirety, and whiskies under 18 years old are currently down to the last couple of containers in many markets worldwide. The brand-new range was to be fully sherry grown, returning the famed Macallan series 1-6 of years past and would certainly be called, and right here’s where the amusing looks began, based upon their color. The brand-new expressions would be Gold, Brownish-yellow, Sienna, and Ruby, from the least to the priciest.
The 1824 Collection.
Macallan wasn’t speaking about applying their whisky whiskies with caramel to press them into the appropriate Pantone brace, but rather focusing on vatting with each other barrels of whisky to generate both the flavor account and natural color needed in each of the brand-new releases. A little can ask, therefore, the use of caramel by various other producers, yet one that Macallan’s frankly ludicrous stocks of sherried whisky enabled.
We can only hypothesize, yet the one thing those supplies did not necessarily have sufficient whisky of certain ages to fulfil the present worldwide demand, leading them to do away with the age statements and also concentrate on generating whisky of consistently high quality and flavor. The future does look intense, though, as Macallan quote that they are currently purchasing over 80% of the recently constructed sherry barrels coming out of Spain, a yearly investment of concerning ₤ 16m– if the wheel of whisky fads swings back around to age statements in the future, Macallan must be ready to require.
Of course, the relocation outraged the whisky nerds, Macallan followers, and many regular consumers who had been buying the numerous Macallan expressions for years. With even more firms looking to whiskies over recent times, there has been a limitless dispute about the benefits of age as a benchmark (with Tim’s predictions from 2010 now looking even more prescient); instead of relying on the producers to make good whisky, with assets on both sides. Nevertheless, with Macallan 1-6 set entering the ring, things got slightly more serious.
A year down the line, things have calmed down. There are still (near constant) discussions, as well as tirades concerning the globe of whisky, as well as discussions over the comparisons between the 1824 Collection and also the whiskies they have changed, continue, however normally, things appear to be going back to just how they were before– people are trying, choosing and also buying whisky, and much of them are Macallan’s.
Regardless of us running barrel-top samplings in our look for the brand-new range, apart from a quick preference of some samples around the moment of their launch, I have yet to have a chance to function my way through the total 1824 Series. The Gold was released a while before the other three entrances in the variety, and it popped up at several tastings I attended and aided run. Fortunately, the launch of the Macallan M, the pinnacle of the 1824 Collection, included a sampling of the array allowing me to do a bit of a contrast and comparison.