Macallan

[bluepeter]

I'm confused.

I keep seeing references to Macallan 12YO. But exactly what does this mean? As far as I can tell, Macallan, unlike many other distilleries, doesn't offer a simple 12YO. There are:
12YO Sherry Oak
12YO Fine Oak
12YO Double Cask
...and maybe more that I haven't spotted.

So if someone asks for a Macallan 12YO, what should they be given?

And where do the NAS (Gold, Ruby etc) whiskies fit into the picture? I have a bottle of Gold (as yet unopened), but have started wondering if I've inadvertently bought the wrong thing. Oh, well, I guess I'll find out when I do open it. But it is rather frustrating not knowing where to start with a distillery.

I'm getting the feeling that there's some history of which I'm unaware here. As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty new to the exploration of whiskies. The Macallan website doesn't seem to be very informative.

[dramblersanonymous]

Yes - not that transparent! I'm not a huge Macallan fan but this is how I see it:

Macallan Sherry Oak is the classic macallan style that everyone likes. Matured entirely in spanish oak - this is the range that has been around for years but at the moment they just don't have enough aged whisky in Spanish oak to keep up with demand. The 18yro is an annual release and sells out very quickly. The older bottles are impossible to get for sensible money (the 25yro is around £1k at the moment).

1824 range (released 2013-ish?) is their current standard offering and is the Gold, Amber Sienna and Ruby. It's basically a sliding scale on the amount of Spanish oak used for aging. From not a lot with Gold to entirely aged in first fill sherry at ruby.

The Macallan Fine Oak series is whisky that has been matured in a mixture of sherry and bourbon barrels - making it a little lighter than the the classic sherry finished stuff, but it meant they have been able to produce some more bottles with an age statement. It's also becoming hard to find and very expensive.

Then they have all their special release stuff - rare cask, M-series, etc.

Is that helpful? If I were to buy a bottle of the 12 I'd go the sherry oak personally.

[John]

Peter, the Macallan 12 Sherry Oak was originally produced for the US market were we had the Macallan 10 year old Sherry Oak here in the UK, the Macallan 12 Sherry Oak was also available in travel retail and specialist whisky shops here in the UK. The Macallan 10 Sherry Oak was discontinued when they introduced the NAS Macallan Gold, Amber, Sienna and Ruby..

Last year they introduced the Macallan 12 Year Old Double http://www.scotchmaltwhisky.co.uk/macallandoublecask12review.htm

They also introduced the Macallan Edition No. 2 http://www.scotchmaltwhisky.co.uk/macallaneditionno2review.htm

[bluepeter]

Thanks for the replies - very helpful.

Peter.

[krakow]

Yep, interesting reading, thanks for this. I wasn't aware of how the range had changed in the last few years, been a while since I had any Macallan.