Lo and behold! The Macallan 18. Something of a quintessential luxury whisky that has had a high profile since… ok well I don’t really know since when. It’s been around  awhile. It seems like the core range sherry oak Macallan 12 and 18 have been fixtures in the whisky industry long enough to influence the movies at least. Of course Macallan made an appearance in Skyfall in the memorable “shoot the whisky not the girl” scene. Obvious references to Macallan have been made in the TV show Lost with the 60 year old MacCutcheon. Note the design of the bottle. The MacCutcheon makes another appearance in the TV show Fringe. So it’s apparent that Macallan has made it’s mark and I suppose it’s likely that the 18 had a bit of influence among Hollywood types. All speculation of course.

Anyway, somewhat unfortunately the 18 has seen a recent increase in price after the introduction of the 1824 NAS range. It went from about £90 in 2012 to £180 in 2015. So from a fairly expensive whisky to an essentially non-drinkable whisky, which is a shame. I’m pretty sure the regular connoisseurs of the stuff were wealthy folks a couple years ago so I wonder if they noticed the price hike or simply kept on ordering it. We were lucky to try it at a recent WOLS tasting that was run by Matt Byerly. The tasting was completely blind and included the 12 and 18 along with the Amber and Sienna. We were all given ballots to rank the whiskies and the top two were the 18 and the Sienna. So perhaps the Sienna is the new 18? Well not quite but you’ll have to judge for yourself. AliceInWhiskyland and I both prefered the 18.

Distillery: Macallan Distillery

Age: 18 Years Old

Cask: Sherry Cask

ABV: 43%

Price: £185.00 at Berry Bros and Rudd