It wasn’t until the early 1980s, faced with a downturn in the market for fillings, that Macallan decided to focus more strongly on the then new single malt category. This process continued throughout the 1970s with the total number of stills reaching 21 by 1975.įor a distillery which has become synonymous with the growth of single malt, it is worth remembering that Macallan has always been an important malt for blending. It was increased to five stills (two wash, three spirit) in 1954 and then more significantly in 1965 when a new stillhouse with seven stills was built.
The plant has continually been expanded from its original wooden shed with two stills. Kemp’s descendants – in particular the Shiach family – retained ownership until the 1996 takeover by Highland Distillers (now Edrington). His ownership ended in 1892, when he sold Macallan to one of the giants of Victorian distilling, Roderick Kemp, who had previously owned Talisker. In 1868, James Stuart took the lease and rebuilt the plant. One of the original farm distilleries of Speyside, Macallan became legal in 1824 when Alexander Reid obtained (or was persuaded to obtain) one of the new licences issued after the passing of the 1823 Excise Act. It is this understanding of the way in which colour is an indication of character which was behind whisky-maker Bob Dalgarno’s creation of the ‘1824 Range’ in 2013. No colour adjustment takes place at Macallan, meaning that each vatting needs to not only replicate the previous one in terms of aroma and taste, but must hit the same hue, despite every cask having a different tint. American oak, on the other hand, adds and enhances sweetness. The nature of the extractives in the European oak (higher levels of tannin, powerful clove and resinous aromas) also needs a heavy spirit to achieve balance. A heavy new make will also require longer in cask to lose any vestigial sulphurous notes.
A large surface-to-volume ratio means that maturation will take longer – Macallan, it is widely agreed, hits its stride fully in its mid-teens. That heavy new make then goes into large, predominantly 500-litre ex-Sherry casks (made of both European and American oak). The opposite applies to maturation, however, where the balance between large and small is more fully revealed. Macallan distillery Speyside Single Malt Scotch WhiskyĮven with an extremely tight (ie small) cut there is little time for copper to do its lightening job on spirit vapour in tiny stills the lyne arms of which are so acutely angled.
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