[MM-MALTS-L] Old Macallan

[Nico Spiegel]

Hello everybody,

It's nice to see that our list has been revitalised after months of extremely low traffic. So, I decided to give up my usual lurking position and to contributed to the debate by asking a question. I bought recently the phantastic photo book "Bottled History - Vestiges of a disappearing era in Scottish malt whisky distileries" by Ian Macilwain (www.bottledhistory.com). It is essentially a collection of great photos of disused equipment, old buildings and forgotten corners of (working and silent) distilleries, together with statements from interviews with retired distillery workers - an atmospheric journey into bygone times.

But that's not my main point. At the end of the book, Macilwain gives explanations on the particular settings where the photos were taken. Among these locations figures "Old Macallan Distillery, Rothes". Macilwain says: "Macallan is an immaculately clean, highly automated distillery, with a deservedly high reputation. Lying behind the main still house is an unobtrusive building containing the original distillery, which has been mothballed since 1980. It is now being brought back into service as a result of increased demand. This old distillery has been largely left alone but sufficient care has been taken to ensure that the washbacks were kept filled with water in a state of potential readiness for future use. In view of the recent announcement regarding its refurbishent this would seem to have been a very wise move" (page 135, referring to the picture on page 93).

Now, I have heard a number of times that Macallan is increasing its capacity by building new big warehouses and recommissioning a second stillhouse that had been out of use for a number of years. I found this always a little bit odd because it implied that at some time in the past Macallan must have cut back existing capacity by something like half, making redundant a whole stillhouse. With Macilwain's explanation things become clearer: There was no cut-back, but actually a replacement of more or less the whole existing distillery (at least the still house, including the washbacks) by brand-new state of the art equipment. However, this is somewhat disturbing because it would suggest a revolutionary change in production in 1980. What's more, if you look at the Macallan timeline, for instance in the Malt Whisky Yearbook 2009, there is no such event mentioned. They indicate rather a slow, continuous increase of capacity ("1974 - The number of stills is increased to 18, 1975 - An
 other three stills are added, 1980 - The name changes to Macallan"). No revolution, only slow, old-fashioned organic growth - but then, what about the sleeping beauty behind the main still house?

Can anybody shed light on this mysterium? What's more, I have a Macallan Gran Reserva 1980 which is a truly great whisky - where was it distilled, in Macilwain's time capsule distillery or in a newly installed high tech unit?

Nico Spiegel
Brussels