The Macallan love to surprise and exceed expectations. This year, The Macallan celebrate 200 years since obtaining their legal licence when their first whisky was produced in 1824. To celebrate, The Macallan with Bentley Motors have released a hedonistic and luxurious single malt whisky with an exclusive twist.
At The Macallan, nothing happens by chance; everything is done with purpose. The Macallan was looking for a car company to ally with and elevate their brand and initially approached Bentley Motors. A strategic partnership between the two iconic brands was established.
It’s an hour’s drive from Aberdeen airport to the globally accredited Macallan Estate in Speyside. The drive took me through the distinct Aberdeenshire countryside over rolling hills and through the impressive front gate, where we continued along the winding driveway in style, to The Macallan distillery and impressive visitors experience.
Designed to resemble the rolling Scottish Highlands, the middle of the building was inspired by a traditional Scottish broch, the oldest form of castle, a circular stone building with grass growing over it.
In the world of The Macallan, the colour red always denotes something special. Back in the day, when sampling casks, if something exceptional was found inside, the cask was marked with red.
The red hue used on their three-car Bentley fleet signifies The Macallan’s 200-year anniversary. The fleet, comprising two hybrid Flying Spurs and a Bentayga SUV, sports private number plates: S12 (Sherry 12), S18 (Sherry 18) and MXB (Macallan and Bentley).
At the heart of the estate lies Easter Elchies House, a traditional Highland manor built in 1700 by Captain John Grant. An image of the stunning house appears on every bottle of Macallan, and when the Flying Spur’s door opened, a projection of the house shone onto the ground, an appropriate personalised touch.
The Whisky
I was here for a reason with a twist: the unveiling of the limited edition The Macallan Horizon, a smooth, decadent, single-malt whisky presented in a horizontal glass bottle with a 180-degree twist, symbolising the twisting of time and space.
I was very excited, as this was only the third tasting, and we were a very select group to have the opportunity to sample this exclusive creation.
Kirsteen Campbell is the Master Whisky Maker at The Macallan Estate. It takes four years to develop a Bentley from start to finish. The level of skill that has gone into this product is entirely befitting of both The Macallan and Bentley Motors.
“It has been an amazing project to deliver together, and it was a hard path to designing a bottle that this industry hasn’t seen before. You can imagine our bottle on a whisky bar amongst other bottles: your eye will fall on our bottle. The liquid inside is so true to Bentley’s values and aligns with us. Imagine what Bentley tastes like: it would be like that,” said Kirsteen.
There were six iterations before landing on the final whisky, but for Kirsteen that brought everything together that is signature to The Macallan and her interpretation of Bentley. “It was amazing to work on and I’m just so excited to see this come to life and fully launch, so that we can talk about the whisky,” she told us.
“The thing for me about Bentley is that there is style and elegance and a certain boldness to the design and that’s what I wanted to bring to the whisky as well: elegance along with boldness, which is quite a tricky combination with whisky. But I hope you agree the flavour combination brings that, with a sweetness: crystalised ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and then raisins, sultanas, dates, dark chocolate covered Brazils; a lovely edge.”
The Bottle
Jaume Ferràs is Global Creative Director at The Macallan. “We started the concept with a very easy step: taking one cask horizontally and symbolising the twist of time and space. It’s quite a primitive instinct, putting something together and twisting it: trying to create this movement of pulling two things together, twisting time and space and symbolising that twist in a cask. That’s why you see this design,” he said.
The Number Six
The number six is meaningful for The Macallan. Their whisky making process takes six steps from malting to bottling. Six materials have come together for The Macallan Horizon: aluminium, copper, leather, glass, wood and whisky.
“The key materials used in its creation have been upcycled or repurposed, and each one is integral to The Macallan and Bentley Motors,” Ferràs informed us.
“The wood, for example, is recycled, and the glass is recyclable; the copper has been repurposed, including from copper stills, while the aluminium is recycled, including that recovered from the Bentley manufacturing process. Completing the picture is carbon neutral leather from local Scottish suppliers, Bridge of Weir Leather, which can also be seen in the recently unveiled Bentley Mulliner grand tourer.”
People buy The Macallan whisky because it has that human touch and craftsmanship to it. It’s about detail, too. For Kirsteen, visiting the Bentley factory and seeing every element of creating a Bentley from start to finish inspired her to draw comparisons.
“Hand stitching, stitch by stitch, is much like our whisky making process, cask by cask. We know every single cask of whisky and we build it cask by cask; we choose to do it at that level,” she said.
It’s a heavy bottle, too, and feels as if it weighs as much as a Bentley!
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