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Our
visit to The Macallan Distillery |
Decanter |
New
Article - Macallan at the Auctions
scotchwhisky.com takes
you to The Macallan Distillery | Part I
| October
1999 Since our ‘associates’ first started signing up at
scotchwhisky.com in 1996, we have always noted the popularity of The Macallan
as one of our member’s ‘favourite’ single malts. So It seemed appropriate
that we should put some time aside, travel to the distillery, and report
back for those of you who have not yet been able to visit. |
Easter
Elchies House
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I was driven up to Speyside
by Keir Sword, the proprietor of Edinburgh’s specialist retailer “Royal
Mile Whiskies”, and – amazingly – the weather was superb and the autumn
colours fantastic. We arrived at the Jacobite house of Easter Elchies which
is now part of The Macallan distillery site and lies just a short walk
from the distillery itself. |
| Easter Elchies House serves
as offices for the operations of The Macallan (and other distilleries owned
by Highland Distillers) and has a charming room with an informal shop for
visitors. The setting, high on a plateau, close to the River Spey, and
overlooking the surrounding valley, is quite magical. |
| We joined 4 other
visitors to do “the tour” which was very well presented and neither too
long-winded nor too irreverent – not always the case with some visitor
attractions. Macallan is interesting in that the still house (the heart
of the distillery) has a multitude of very small stills, described as one
of the keys to producing a top quality spirit. Also of particular
interest was the sampling room where every bottling is subject to rigorous
nosing by the whisky maker and his team of ‘noses’. To give justice to
this procedure I have prepared a report to focus on how they maintain the
style and quality of each edition of The Macallan. In part III
we will be featuring the The Macallan Sampling
Room
After some nosing straight
from a wonderful old cask in the warehouse, and our visit to the sampling
room, the tour ended back at Easter Elchies with a generous dram and the
most dramatically wonderful video presentation I have ever experienced.
In a part-bar, part-music theatre setting, we were shown a Monty Pythonesqe
film about The Macallan – if only all whisky videos were as individual
as this! |
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| Keir and I then drove across
the River Spey to the Craigallachie Hotel to visit their Quaich Bar for
lunch, amidst a stunning collection of over 300 single malts. The
great thing here is the food! We had a delicious lunch and enjoyed
studying the collection, which is easy to view as it surrounds you on every
wall of the Quaich Bar. I was pleased to see a bottle of our Glengoyne
from the Online Tasting event we did at scotchwhisky.com for Burns Night
1998.
We had arranged to return
to the distillery for a meeting with Margaret Gray and Jane Grimley who
run the visitor side of the distillery. This gave us a chance to delve
into a little more depth than would have been possible on the tour and
we tackled details such as the original name of the place Macallan which
was Inverallen. Because the name had been recorded with a badly written
“Inver” it had reappeared as Macallan – and we have to assume that whisky
had nothing to do with this historic adjustment ! |
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There are also far more
people at The Macallan distillery than you find at most other distilleries.
About 60 people work here, many looking after the operations side for a
number of other distilleries. I found this a most welcome change as so
many of the whisky jobs in Scotland are either based in the lowlands near
the ports, or outside Scotland all together. It gives the distillery, the
very heart of the name and the whisky, more prominence within the organisation,
which has to be a good thing. Another aim of our visit was to find out
more about the famous historic bottles of The Macallan that are renowned
for setting auction room records. |
| As luck would have it historic
whisky expert Martin Green from Christies (who hold two whisky auctions
each year - see our Part II article on The
Rarest Whiskies in The World) was conducting some research at the distillery
that day. and Nina MacKellar, who looks after the distilleries own
collection, had assembled the most extraordinary array of old bottles of
The Macallan that you are ever likely to see at one time. Over 60 bottles
were arranged in the old company boardroom and spanned the years 1830 till
1930. No other distillery, in my mind, has anything like the legacy of
stock that exists of Macallan – perhaps an indicator that this spirit has
always been a popular and sought after product. I was interested to see
one bottle that had been bottled by the local grocer in Craigellachie –
early brand building in the important local market! James
Thomson
To make an appointment to
visit
telephone (+44) 1340
871 471
Open: Mon - Fri 10am
- 4pm
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