Anecdotes of ages
The exquisite and incredibly rare Anecdotes of Ages Collection will be sought after worldwide by whisky and art lovers alike.
Each of the 13 original bottles are hand-blown with an oak stopper, and feature a label signed by Sir Peter Blake. Presented in a handcrafted European oak case incorporating thumbnail photography revealing Sir Peter Blake’s inspirational journey with The Macallan, the expressions are also accompanied by a leather-bound book showcasing all 13 label artworks and corresponding stories, as well as a certificate of authenticity.
While the 13th original bottle will be retained in The Macallan archive, a highly limited-edition whisky featuring a duplicate label and the same rare 1967 whisky, will be released as The Anecdotes of Ages Collection: Down to Work Limited Edition. Only 322 bottles will be available worldwide.
Easter Elchies Estate
On this label, against a backdrop of sunlit fields and trees, Sir Peter Blake introduces five local inhabitants. They are startling in their immediacy. Vibrant, russet red and gold against the green, they radiate pulsing life. Bold collage lends the creatures extraordinary presence.
The red squirrel, scarce to non-existent elsewhere, is proudly native. Red deer stag, red-legged partridge, hares and rabbits enjoy rights to roam, long written into the natural cycle.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
The Old Farm
Sir Peter Blake’s unique label pays tribute to this past, referencing the ancient farm, the workers and, especially, the horse.
Centre stage, the team on display are at once stoic and majestic. They could stand for the legions of horses that worked here, many of whom played their part as much by ferrying oak casks of whisky to riverboats and railways as they did by tilling the land. They deserve their pride of place on the bottle.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
A Licence to distil
This precious liquid selected by Sarah Burgess, presents rewardingly complex, exotic, fruited and light spice notes.
Captured by Mary McCartney, in the whorl of a tree with the snap of her lens, it is one of thirteen unique bottles around which art, history and great dedication have been wrapped in the most remarkable collaboration.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
The Macallan Mausoleum
Lead Whisky Maker Sarah Burgess’ canny nose for the perfect whisky has been matched by Mary McCartney’s photographic framing of the bottle against a moss coated wall, in a calming, green gloom. A mausoleum is, quite rightly, a place of profound remembrance. This single malt is one that will be impossible to forget.
There are reassuring, homely flavours with natural notes of oak, hazelnut and strawberry (the fruit grows abundantly in Scotland). There are exotic notes, too, of pineapple, fig and light spiced peach; mesmeric combinations that serve as sensual travel agents.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
The giant and the fish
Thoughtful and considerate, Kemp also had a keen eye for commercial opportunity. Made aware that the Earl of Elgin, shooting on a nearby grouse moor, had just been appointed Viceroy of India, he sent some ‘real old Macallan’ immediately, an exemplar of early influencer marketing
The real – and rare – whisky in this bottle is just over fifty years old, the same age as Kemp when he took the reins at the Distillery. It has a depth and maturity to match his. Lead Whisky Maker Sarah Burgess’ choice of whisky is fully rounded, with sherried-oak notes that, as in the 1890s, add a chord of tastes that are deep, complex and compelling.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
journey to market
Sir Peter Blake’s masterful collage label here summons icons and imagery of the industrial age. Modern technology eventually arrived at the Distillery in 1920 with the purchase, by Janet Harbinson as proprietor, of a 3.5 tonne steam wagon. It was immediately christened the ‘iron horse’.
Oak casks of The Macallan began leaving the Easter Elchies Estate a little more consistently, bound for Dandeleith Station and trains that would head to Aberdeen to catch steamers south to London, or to Glasgow for shipping to the New World or the Empire approaching its sunset.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
Cattle, Barley and potatoes
Sir Peter Blake reintroduces us to the immediacy and majesty of farming. Shire horses have served their time, but Highland cattle and their Aberdeen Angus companions still roam the Estate.
As for barley, this important crop continues to be grown on The Macallan Estate. Animals and crops belong here. There is no doubt that farming will always play an accompanying part in the life of The Macallan.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
Family life and work
In the label created by Sir Peter Blake for this 1967 bottling, Janet is joined by homely reminders of that interwar world. The rabbit is emblematic of the countryside she loved so much, although it would hardly have been welcomed in the vegetable garden. Her (not always reliable) Calthorpe motorcycle and the family’s Sunbeam motorcar stand proud against her home, its bleak granite brickwork arranged into a smile of a house.
The building is often described as ‘couthy, not grand’, a Scottish encapsulation of familiar and unstuffy qualities that could be applied equally to Janet Harbinson herself.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
Easter Elchies House
Sir Peter Blake’s ghostly artwork for this unique label is a wonderful tribute to The Macallan’s Spiritual Home. Created in black and white, perhaps reflecting some dark days, the label’s centre of artistic gravity is the Second World War.
Easter Elchies House was requisitioned for military use and distilling was outlawed from 1943 until hostilities ceased. From here, both battle plans and personnel were dispersed to various fronts throughout the conflict. The captains WE Johns, of Biggles books fame, and WF Player, of the cigarette dynasty, were just two celebrated tenants among many drawn to hunting, shooting and fishing holidays.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
Down to work limited edition
Methodically, Harbinson (who was not related to Janet) restored the business with a steady optimism, a stoic get-up-and-go that fuelled the growth of the 1950s and 60s. From his tiny office, in the 1970s, he decreed that The Macallan remain faithful to sherry seasoned oak casks. Quality and continuity were his abiding focus.
On this label Sir Peter Blake chronicles that time, championing workers who devoted their – in many cases – lifelong efforts to whisky making. The Distillery served as the heart of both their working lives and also as a social and family hub. The earlier support for war widows and hardworking Land Girls was an extension of this social philanthropy.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
The river spey
George Low was appointed the first ghillie after serving twenty-four years as a distillery mashman. A talented accordion and harmonica player, George took to his later role with proprietary zeal, developing The Macallan’s very own salmon fly whilst in post. Then, as now, a day by the river with such a knowledgeable companion was a rare and memorable experience.
The same should be said of the whisky in this bottle. The clear spring water for its specific mash was sourced in the same year that George Low first began work at The Macallan. From one of the curiously small stills (as permanent a feature at the Distillery as the Spey itself) the new make spirit would have been carefully syphoned into a European sherried oak cask, and left to mature for half a century.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
A new era of advertising
Chairman Allan Shiach (whose parallel career as a screenwriter includes the film Don’t Look Now and, more recently, The Queen’s Gambit) appointed legendary marketing man, Hugh Mitcalfe, to the task. He commissioned David Holmes, a painter whose watercolour of Easter Elchies House forms the backdrop to Sir Peter Blake’s label, to lead the campaign.
Together with writer Nick Salaman and, later, artists such as Peter Till, Peter Brooks and Axel Scheffler, Holmes orchestrated a cannon of work at first welcomed and later, amongst aficionados, eagerly anticipated.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
A new distillery
On the label, at the group’s centre, Master Whisky Maker Kirsteen Campbell stands with her team Russell Greig, Stephen Bremner and Polly Logan. Together with Sarah Burgess, they are joined by Master of Wood, Stuart McPherson, whose influence on the maturation of any new make spirit is as vital as it is finessed.
Behind these six exceptional people glow the tessellated roof patterns and gloriously sweeping curves of Rogers Stirk, Harbour and Partners’ architectural masterpiece, a seamless fusion of the geometric with the organic.
| Brand | The Macallan |
| No. of bottles | 322 |
| Country | Scotland |
| Region | Speyside |
| Size | 70, 75cl |
| ABV / Strength | 46.7% |
| Age | NAS (vintage 1967) |
| Varietal | Single Malt |
