Macallan, one of the most famous single malt whisky brands in the world, still remember that when I first started drinking whiskey, I had a mixed emotion with Macallan. Even if my friends told me that Macallan’s wine is not cost-effective, but when there is a chance, I have no hesitation to buy a sharing bottle, is like having never drunk Macallan, it is not considered a single malt whisky, Macallan is right The attractiveness of newcomers need not be repeated.
Macallan's high prices at various auctions are almost no news. Various celebrities and wealthy people are rushing to Macallan's high-end whiskey. Ordinary people who drink its regular wines also have to take pictures and send a circle of friends, even James Bond also drinks Macallan 1962 in the movie.
Whenever we read an article introducing Macallan, can always see its small distiller, which only takes 16% of the wine heart essence, the heaviest body, and its persistence in using sherry barrels. It seems that Macallan's status today is entirely based on the obtained from its excellent quality sherry casks.
Actually more than 40 years ago, almost no one knew Macallan after leaving speyside, because like all Scotch whisky distilleries at that time, Macallan's main business was to supply base liquor for blended whiskey.
In 1966, Macallan began to launch official bottled single malt whisky. In 1978, Willie Phillips was just hired as the manager of the Macallan Distillery. He couldn't find Macallan's own bottled whiskey in the local bar. At that time, the annual sales volume of Macallan's OB was only about 2000 boxes.
So what does Macallan taste like before becoming famous? Recently, I happened to drink a Macallan bottled in 1976-77 and exported to Italy for 8 years. At that time, Macallan was still using the winery name of Glenlivet-Macallan, which was not changed until 1980.
This 8-year-old Macallan has an alcohol content of 43% and is matured in sherry barrels. I have to say that low-alcohol whiskey is not suitable for long-term bottle aging. I can only use the current state of this wine to get a glimpse of the flavor of macallan back then.
The smell of this wine is very heavy at the beginning, like the cupboards placed in the kitchen for a long time, old books, and some corrupt leaves. This long-aged wine usually takes a while to wake up. After a while, the slightly sharp red wine vinegar-like fruit acid was released first, followed by caramel, thick dark jam, high-purity dark chocolate, mushrooms, woods after rain, and soil. The taste of
is a bit rough, and more than 40 years of bottle aging has not made this wine more submissive. After the light caramel and jam flavors, it is black coffee, oak, mud, sage, mint, and a lot of tannins. , A bit spicy. The aftertaste is long and astringent. Black coffee and tannins are the main notes of the final rhyme.
I will not try to rate this wine, because I believe that the taste I feel at the moment should be quite different from when it was first bottled. The complexity of this wine is very high and I am not sure how much. It was brought by Ping Chen, but it at least let me know that compared to the present, the Macallan in the 1970s has a stronger personality and a more rough .
My beloved teacher Li Dadai once asked Jim Murray face-to-face in the Beijing master class. In 2014, the Yamazaki Sherry Cask won the title in the "Whiskey Bible" because this Japanese wine reminded him of a 1970s. Bottled Macallan 10-year-old whiskey. In other words, in the minds of these older generation of whisky masters, the former Macallan sherry barrel whiskey is irreplaceable .
In the early 1980s, in response to the decline in market demand for blended whiskey, MacaLlan, like other Scotch whisky distilleries, began to focus on launching its own single malt whisky. At that time, Macallan’s wine cellar contained a large number of raw wines of different ages. For the whisky industry, enough raw wines in inventory meant a huge advantage. For Macallan back then, the only problem was how to sell the wine.
Because the flavor of sherry barrel whiskey has many similarities with cognac brandy, Macallan's management team first positioned its own whiskey style as the cognac of "the cognac of whisky" whisky.
This is very important. Even though the single malt whisky is very hot today, Cognac still has a considerable share of the high-end spirits market, and the flavor is close to Cognac, which means that Macallan has the prerequisites for entering the ranks of high-end spirits. . Later, the source of sherry barrels for Scotch whisky was cut off. Edrington Group invested in a cooperage factory in Spain to maintain this flavor advantage.
At the same time, Macallan and the Holmes Knight Ritchie advertising company in London have carried out a series of very creative and effective marketing activities.
They compiled Macallan's advertisements into short stories, with illustrations, and printed them next to the Times crossword puzzle. They successfully attracted their target customers: the middle class with good education and a sense of humor. These newspaper advertisements from the 1980s to the 1990s played a huge role in promoting Macallan.
Macallan has launched the archival series "archival" series product every year since 2015 to commemorate these advertising ideas that helped Macallan to succeed.
Benefited from the abundant raw wine inventory, Macallan launched a series of senior wines in the mid-80s. From 25 years, 50 years to 60 years, these rare senior whiskeys on the market at that time quickly attracted spirit collectors. This has brought Macallan a huge reputation worldwide, and it is also the beginning of Macallan's dominance of the high-end collection market in the future.
The Macallan 60 years bottled in 1986 specially invited the Italian artist Valerio Adami and the British artist Sir Peter Blake to design the wine label. One of the bottles was sold at the Bonhams auction in Edinburgh in 2018 for a sky-high price of over 840,000 pounds (equivalent to approximately 7.53 million RMB). ).
Now the Macallan whisky bottled in the 1980s and 1990s is too expensive. I only found a Macallan 18 that was distilled in 1985 and bottled in 2003 to feel the taste of the 1980s. Although it was bottled after 2000, this wine bottle has been aged for nearly 20 years. Considering the alcohol content of this wine is 43%, the influence of bottle aging is also obvious. The smell of
is relatively elegant and not very open. At first, it smells like oil paper and old books. After a while, the smell of caramel mixed with shredded tobacco comes out, which is relatively deep, followed by cream chocolate and apple Sauce, preserved fruit, and finally old wood and tannin. The taste of
is very soft, even a little delicate, with caramel, raisins, date nectar, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, and tannins. Long aftertaste.
Even without considering the aging of the bottle, this wine makes me almost feel no sense of power. Maybe this wine is more suitable for the elderly rich people to have a meal after dinner.
In fact, Macallan after 2000 still has some outstanding works. In addition to the Macallan 10-year barrel strength I often mentioned, there is also my first Macallan whiskey, Gran Reserva "Purple Diamond" 12 years old.
Speaking of "Purple Diamond" for 12 years, is a Macal designed for the Japanese and Taiwanese markets.Lan whiskey made me feel the woody aroma for the first time. , 45.6% is the most suitable alcohol for Macallan to fully show its style. It is a pity that "Purple Diamond" has long been discontinued, and the current price is about to catch up with Macallan for 18 years.
In 1996, Macallan Distillery was acquired by Highland Distiller Highland Distillation Group. In 1999, with Highland Distiller merged into Edrington Group, Macallan Distillery became Edrington's core single malt whisky brand by virtue of its established market position. For Macallan, a new chapter has opened.
Edrington Group adjusted Macallan's market positioning and made it a symbol of high-grade and luxurious lifestyle. Today, Macallan has successfully become a luxury brand.
In 2018, the new Macallan distillery with a cost of 140 million pounds was officially put into production and opened to tourists. The design of the new distillery was avant-garde and bold, which almost broke the pattern of all traditional whiskey distilleries. For a time, celebrities from all walks of life gathered, and all kinds of luxury and dazzling.
However, in recent years, Macallan has launched a variety of high-priced and low-quality NAS, and more and more cheap bourbon barrels are used to participate in it. The new version of 12 years and 18 years can only be described as lifeless.
Whether Macallan is still worth drinking today is a matter of opinion. Again, everyone’s starting point for drinking whiskey is different, and the happiness they get is also different. I just hope that one day I can see Macallan’s wine worth its price.
