Purple Falcon Software: speyside

The Macallan in Lalique The Spiritual Home

The Macallan and Lalique are delighted to present the latest masterpiece from their prestigious collaboration, The Macallan in Lalique Six Pillars Collection. The fifth decanter in the collection, The Macallan in Lalique “The Spiritual Home”, marks the penultimate decanter in this global sell out series. The whisky featured within the decanter is an exquisite and very rare 62 years old Macallan single malt whisky.

Designed and created by the legendary French crystal house Lalique, exclusively for The Macallan, and limited to only 400 individually numbered decanters, the Spiritual Home edition will be highly desired and eagerly anticipated.

David Cox, Director of Fine & Rare Whiskies for The Macallan commented, “Our inspirational partnership with Lalique is widely regarded as one of the ultimate luxury partnerships. This fifth collaboration in The Macallan in Lalique Six Pillars collection further reinforces our commitment to working together to create beautiful and desirable objets d’art.

The Six Pillars of The Macallan are the inspiration behind this wonderful collection; they comprise those elements which combine to give our exceptional single malt whisky its supreme quality and distinctive character. This is the penultimate decanter on an inspirational journey to the heart of The Macallan. Easter Elchies House is the only manor home of its kind to be part of a distillery estate in Scotland and dates back to 1700 when it was built by Captain John Grant.

This collection has inspired interest from connoisseurs and collectors since its inception in 2005, representing a marriage of the finest and rarest Macallan single malt whisky and bespoke designed decanters, interpreting the Six Pillars, from the master crystal craftsmen at Lalique. There are very few distilleries that have the aged stock profile that we do, and we are privileged to have the opportunity to produce a magnificent 62 years old, originally filled to American oak sherry seasoned casks in November 1950. This is the second oldest Macallan ever released by the distillery since its foundation in 1824.”

Inspired by the artistic genius of Rene Lalique’s legacy and Easter Elchies House, The Macallan’s spiritual home, Lalique’s Marc Larminaux interpreted the harled surface applied to the sandstone walls of Easter Elchies House by creating a textured frosted surface on three sides of the decanter, an effect created through the use of a ‘digital stamp’ of the actual wall; in contrast three sides of the decanter have been left in clear crystal. One of the frosted sides features the bold initials, JEG, replicating the initials which are incorporated in the original date stone, which can be seen high up on the western elevation of Easter Elchies House. These are the initials of Captain John Grant, who oversaw the building of the present manor house in 1700.

The date stone itself, with both initials and date, is replicated in its entirety at the base of one of the side panels of the decanter. Finally, the distinctive “crow-steps” at the gable ends of the house are interpreted through the steps on the neck of the decanter, leading up to the proud standing stopper, representing one of the chimneys. A striking, unusual design, this fifth decanter in the Six Pillars series again exemplifies the artistic creativity and inspiration of Lalique.

Silvio Denz, Chairman and CEO of Lalique, said: “Following the resounding success of the first four decanters in The Macallan in Lalique Six Pillars Collection, Lalique is proud to unveil the fifth. After months of collaboration on the design of the new decanter, Lalique has created a superb example of craftsmanship that encapsulates the spirit of Easter Elchies House, the distillery’s spiritual home at the heart of The Macallan Estate.

“The spectacular shape and exquisite detail of this Fifth Pillar represent countless hours of painstaking work by Lalique’s master craftsmen. We sincerely hope that the fortunate few owners of this sumptuous new decanter take as much pleasure in admiring it as we have done in creating it”.

In 2010 the relationship was taken to new heights with the creation of the Cire Perdue decanter containing the oldest ever Macallan ever released, at 64 years old. This unique decanter and its rare contents were auctioned by Sotheby’s New York in November 2010, raising a staggering US $460,000 for charity: water, an innovative charity dedicated to providing clean and safe drinking water for people in developing countries, as well as smashing the world record price for a bottle of scotch whisky.

The Spiritual Home decanter is available in the UK from December 2013 at specialist whisky retailers, RRP £16,000.

Colour – Rich cherry

Aroma – Rich and aromatic. A strong opening of treacle toffee leads into raisin and blood orange. Later aromas of apple pie, sprinkled with ginger, cinnamon and chocolate, with layers of darker vanilla, embellished by soft burnished oak.

Taste – Rich dried fruits open up, with strong raisin flavours. Layers of sweet ginger figs and cigar leaf in viscous suspension are followed by woody oak flavours, polished yet showing complexity of age.

Finish – Long and embracing

Alcohol Strength – 53.1%

The timeless reputation of The Macallan is founded upon Six Pillars:

The Spiritual Home
Easter Elchies House proudly watches over The Macallan distillery in Speyside, Scotland. Built in 1700, this Jacobean manor house is The Macallan’s spiritual home.

Curiously Small Stills
The Macallan’s curiously small and uniquely shaped copper stills help to concentrate the flavour of the ‘new make’ spirit.

The Finest Cut
The ‘cut’ is the amount of distilled spirit collected from the stills as ‘new make’ spirit. The Macallan takes one of the ﬁnest ‘cuts’ of any distillery in Scotland; typically just 16% goes forward to fill or our casks.

Exceptional Oak Casks
The Macallan’s selection of the finest and most expensive maturation casks fundamentally influence the product’s final outstanding quality and distinctive character.

Natural Colour
The Macallan insists upon Natural Colour. It is the interaction of spirit and wood alone which delivers the rich variety of colour, aroma and taste evident through out the range.

Peerless Spirit
The Macallan remains the single malt against which all others must be judged. It is celebrated far and wide by experts and discerning drinkers as the world’s most precious whisky.

Jeffrey Dale Starr is a whisky enthusiast, oil painter, and owner of mobile software company Purple Falcon.

Mortlach Distillery

Diageo has announced the rebirth of Mortlach™, one of the most formidable and revered Single Malt Scotch Whiskies to have been created on Speyside.

For decades, Mortlach’s output has been largely captured by Diageo’s blenders to add its unique notes to complex world-class Blended Scotch whiskies – though in recent times, a very limited number of bottles of Mortlach Single Malt Whisky have been available, and sold rapidly to connoisseurs in the know.

But now for the first time, and in response to suggestions over the years that such a rewarding Single Malt Whisky deserved a wider market, it will be available in global markets in four expressions aimed at global travel and the luxury and connoisseur segment: Rare Old, Special Strength, 18-year-old and 25-year-old.

Mortlach has been described by whisky connoisseurs as “The Beast of Dufftown”, for its rich and powerful flavours, produced in an astonishingly complicated and unique distillation process which commentators have attempted to explain as ‘2.81 Distilled’.

A famous family had a hand in that.

In 1823 Mortlach was the first distillery to be built at Dufftown, now one of the epicentres of Speyside whisky distilling. Its most eminent owners were the entrepreneurial Scottish civil engineer George Cowie,and his gifted and equally ambitious son Dr Alexander Cowie.

After playing a role in the shaping of the railway industry in the 19th century, George Cowie applied his pioneering and precise approach to engineering another great challenge, the production of Single Malt Scotch Whisky. He accepted a partnership at the Mortlach distillery in 1852, before becoming sole owner in 1867.

He clearly made an impact as shortly afterwards a local newspaper wrote: “There is not perhaps a distillery in Scotland that has so many private customers as Mortlach from which spirits are sent not only over the three kingdoms to families, but to America, India, China and Australia, in all of which Mr Cowie has customers who prefer his distillation to all others …” (The Elgin Courant, 1869).

In 1896, George died and his son Alexander, who through his own pioneering work had become an enlightened traveller, returned to Dufftown from Hong Kong and assumed full control of the distillery. Harnessing his entrepreneurial energies and scientific background to oversee the development of Mortlach, Alexander paved the way for the creation of a unique distillation system precisely calculated to create the highly complex and richly flavoured whisky that we know today. Alexander developed a profound knowledge and mastery of whisky making. Indeed, his pioneering work on whisky creation and production was soon recognised in the leading role he played in Scotland’s expanding malt whisky world.

As Chairman of the North of Scotland Malt Distillers’ Association, Alexander represented the interests of over 40 distillers in the North of Scotland and spoke on their behalf at the 1908/09 Royal Commission on Whiskey, where he proudly claimed “I am a malt distiller of high flavoured whisky, a thick type of whisky”.

In a golden age of Victorian expansion and improvement, George and Alexander Cowie were typical of those generations of Scottish engineers, scientists, surveyors and entrepreneurs who, with a energetic sense of purpose, made a confident and lasting mark not just in Scotland and Britain but around the world.

At the helm of the Mortlach distillery for over half a century, the Cowies’ innovative spirit shaped the brand and liquid for centuries to come. In the spirit of these pioneers, the reborn Mortlach whiskies are a celebration of those audacious thinkers who shaped today’s world, just as their forefathers did in the era in which Mortlach was born.

Just as both generations of Cowies made major investments to expand and improve their distillery, so they would undoubtedly be proud to note that its present owners (as announced in April 2013) are investing to double the distillery’s capacity and promote its whiskies widely – a statement of intent and ambition that George and Alexander would surely endorse. The expansion will include the building of a new stillhouse, which will replicate the bewilderingly complex distillation process which makes Mortlach™ unique.

The new Mortlach expressions will be available in selected markets in mid-2014. Further details of pricing, distribution and packaging will be released in early 2014.