The Heart of The Spirit
The Heart of the spirit
A Voyage Through Time and seasons
Discover a voyage through time, past, present and future. Bringing together the talents of acclaimed visual artist Javi Aznarez and award-winning Scottish poet Jenni Fagan, The Heart of The Spirit captures the key moments of our 200 years of history, brought to life through illustrations and poetry.
The Heart of the Spirit Immersive Experience
Spring has arrived
Capturing two hundred years of The Macallan is wonderfully challenging. The Macallan has made its way around the world in ways that would have been unimaginable to its founders, whilst always staying true to its home nestled above the River Spey in north-east Scotland.
Our 485-acre Estate has a history of agriculture and human settlement since the Iron Age. People have been drawn to the beauty of this land and its outstanding natural resources since that time. The Macallan still keeps itself warm within its heart and Spiritual Home of Easter Elchies House on the Estate.
Throughout the next months we will visit our history, glimpse the future, and take the time to pause in the present celebration—our 200th anniversary.
2024
From its early days as a budding Highland business, our Estate has been the site of many community celebrations. Bonfires lit on the hill overlooking the Distillery amidst great cheering during family weddings, such as those of Janet Harbinson or her sister Catherine, became a tradition of sorts, while music and dancing marked special occasions, from retirement parties for those who worked at the Distillery, to summer gatherings and Hogmanay celebrations.
In 2024, as we reach our 200th year, The Macallan Estate will once more bear witness to many splendid festivities that will mark this momentous occasion.
Meet
The Collaborators
Javi Aznárez
We worked with Javi Aznárez, a celebrated Spanish artist, painter and illustrator. We have previously collaborated on The Macallan Red Collection, and his striking illustrations and graphic art have appeared in books, storyboards, exhibitions and in some of the world’s most renowned publications, such as Vogue, The New Yorker and The Guardian. He was the main illustrator for Wes Anderson’s film The French Dispatch, and his distinct technique and relationship to colour have been much praised.
Jenni Fagan
Jenni Fagan is an award-winning Scottish novelist, poet, screenwriter and artist. She has published four fiction novels, including The Panopticon and Luckenbooth, seven poetry collections, and her books have been translated into numerous languages to great critical acclaim worldwide. She has written for some of the world’s leading publications, and her work has been recognised by multiple awards and accolades. (Photograph by Mihaela Bodlovic)
The Heart of the Spirit Book
200 years of The Macallan depicted in a limited-edition, poetry book written by Jenni Fagan, illustrated by Javi Aznarez. With only 1,000 available, this book is protected by a hand-crafted oak wooden case and includes a hand-signed art print.
Rocks of ages.
The Macallan Estate lies on Dalradian rocks hundreds of millions of years old, the source of naturally filtered spring waters and fertile soils. The richness of this land and The River Spey have nurtured barley crops for centuries.
WHO BROUGHT US HERE
Beginning with Alexander Reid, the teacher and farmer who founded The Macallan in 1824, countless individuals have played a role in shaping our future. They had in common an obsession with quality, a dedication to craftsmanship, and a commitment to doing the right thing.
MAGHELLAN
The name “Macallan” means fertile land, but it can also be related to the name of local saints. Over the centuries sounds and spellings of names and places change, their origins lost in the past. So it is with The Macallan.
The Spirit Stills
Alexander Reid chose to use smaller stills in 1824 because it was common knowledge that they produced "...whisky [that was] infinitely more wholesome, of a finer flavour, and in every way more highly prized.”
A still arrived this morning, The Macallan is born
EXCISE ACT
The 6th Earl of Seafield owned the estate of Easter Elchies when Alexander Reid, his tenant farmer, established a Distillery in 1824 on estate lands. A rush of applications for licences had followed the 1823 Excise Act, which finally reduced the punishing duty rates and the allowable minimum size of stills. Securing the landlord’s permission suited both parties: for the landlord, hopefully a more secure stream of rent; for the tenant, the potential for a new source of revenue. The Macallan was born.
By 1827, three years after establishing the Distillery, The Macallan was producing 6,500 litres of alcohol in the period from January to July. Alexander Reid began the tradition of smaller stills, weaker washes and more flavoursome spirit drawing on centuries of Highland knowledge and legacy. A letter to the Inverness Courier in 1830, remarking on the persistence of smuggling, stated, “It is equally notorious that the spirit of the smugglers is infinitely more wholesome, of a finer flavour and in every way more highly prized……”
HIGHLAND HOSPITALITY
The corner cupboard is famous!
Easter Elchies House
Hosts visitors in such a way
That weary heads forget the need to rest.
After a day at the Distillery and Estate,
It is a home that welcomes guests,
A bigger kitchen to cater for all,
Warm furnishings welcome in the sitting room.
In a place so very dear to The Macallan,
Guests sleep so soundly,
Until the calm Speyside dawn,
A summer sun rises, on a beautiful new day!
At the heart of The Macallan Estate we find the Easter Elchies House, the Spiritual Home of The Macallan. After being a home for decades, it reverted to its roots as a home for entertaining visitors and resting weary heads after a day at the Distillery and Estate, rounded off with an evening of Highland Hospitality back in 2005/06.
The renovation restored guest bedrooms on the upper floors and enlarged the first floor kitchen, with warm furnishings in the sitting room and dining room. With nightfall, after an evening sampling the wonderful liquid treasures of the famous corner cupboard, guests could now sleep soundly on site, sprinkled with The Macallan’s magic dust, to awake in the calm of a Speyside dawn.
CURIOUSLY SMALL STILLS
The shape and size of our Curiously Small Stills give the spirit maximum contact with the copper, helping to concentrate the “new make” spirit and providing the rich, fruity, full-bodied flavours characteristic of The Macallan.
Their shape has remained much as it was in Roderick Kemp’s day: during the planning of the new stillhouse in the 1950s, the directors noted that “the stills should not be altered in size or shape in any way, and any extra stills contemplated should be of exactly the same shape and dimension.”
There are twenty-four perfectly crafted spirit stills,
Each curiously small,
All so the whisky can have as much contact with copper
And heat to create a flavour, unique.
Yes, of course they could have been designed much bigger!
No, that was not ever going to happen.
Within The Macallan, ethos honours taste, scent, hue,
To remember, always, the Six Pillars.
Autumn
What's Done Today
It’s true the 1920s and the 1930s were a time of advice.
Watch the pennies!
Why do we watch them?
So, in time, they will grow plentiful,
Because we’ve been smart enough —
To know
That sacrifices now
Create success tomorrow.
It takes strong tea to be this stoic!
Morals too, and a wee bit of humour,
please always do lob that in, too.
In 1926 Janet Harbinson crafted what would become the most valuable bottle of wine or spirit ever sold at auction. Always guided by conviction and a belief in doing the next right thing, Harbinson’s quiet modesty, grace and spirit left a remarkable legacy: the whisky she distilled, bottled by her great nephew, Allan Shiach , would go on to break world records.
In 2023, one of only 12 bottles in the coveted The Macallan Valerio Adami release, bottled in 1986 after being aged in sherry casks for 60 years, sold for £2.2million.
Every now from the past
We do what we do for the future
A generation not even born yet
We do what we do for the present
People we love and value best
We do what we do for the history
Such a gift to every now from the past!
Wild Men
The records handwritten, and later typed
By archivists unassuming and occasionally incidental
Tell us of such thrilling tiny anecdotes
That often add up to a lot somehow
Like in the booklet — The Macallan Pillars of Spiritual Wisdom
Where it states:
‘I was told by a local Speyside man that, in his youth and early manhood,
The Macallan had a reputation for employing the “wild men” of the district, those free spirits
Too independently minded to settle in Distillery work elsewhere.’
If spirit is soul and courage, and freedom is no kind of vice,
Many qualities merge in this river of The Macallan,
Representing a family of those who were never afraid to be driven forward
By those unafraid to take a stand.
Starry Sky
Driven by the energetic vision of Peter and Allan Shiach, (Gordon) Leslie Shiach’s two sons, under the wise guidance and overview of George Harbinson, The Macallan exited the 1960s, in very different shape from its post war condition. A second production plant, new warehouses and the first public listing of shares were all designed to meet the growing demand for this remarkable spirit.
In the late 1960’s more bottles of The Macallan were starting to find their way over the ocean waves to foreign shores, notably to Italy and France, together with the USA and even a small order to Singapore. Trademarks were being registered overseas. The first reference to the term ‘marketing’ appeared in relation to Germany and Belgium, though it would be another ten years before the implications of that discipline would begin to take serious shape.
Starry sky
As stars pick out constellations
Snowfall softens
All things, so silence
Might be heard as wonder.
[...] A special moment to open The Macallan,
Waited for with anticipation,
That special feeling,
Time will be toasted, and treasured.
Trade marks are registered,
It’s a modest moment,
Yet truly celebrated —
By all at The Macallan, what a decade!
Winter
Mastery
The sample room at The Macallan stands at the epicentre of all decisions made about what casks should be incorporated into which bottling, and when. A member of The Macallan Whisky Mastery Team who often found himself working late into the evening, and sometimes early into the night, said:
“In the quiet of those late hours I was working for the ghosts of the past, for those who had gone before, driven by quality, seeking to do the best they could through their time. Always judged by others, but quiet by their own accord, I felt a deep respect for them and all they had done. We get to look after The Macallan for just a short while. I did the best I could. I only hope I left it in a better place. That would do me.”
STARRY SKY
As stars pick out constellations Snowfall softens
All things, so silence
Might be heard as wonder.
Outside Easter Elchies House The holly’s boughs are darkest green again,
She is still the grand dame, Eldest tree around.
Boxes that have left The Estate for months, Are now being opened For festivities in Italy,
A special family moment in Singapore, In a tall skyscraper in Germany,
A coveted restaurant in Belgium,
An opera in Paris!
A special moment to open The Macallan, Waited for with anticipation,
That special feeling,
Time will be toasted, and treasured.
Trade marks are registered,
It’s a modest moment,
Yet truly celebrated —
By all at The Macallan, what a decade!
The world of fine wine inspired the introduction of the greatest range of rare vintage single malt whiskies ever released by a single Distillery.
Ranging from 1937 to 1972 and paired with iconic photos from the Getty Images library at the launch in London in 2002, The Macallan Fine & Rare range re-shaped the market for vintage single malt whiskies, drawing on the success of previous releases which had established The Macallan as the pre-eminent single malt for collectors and connoisseurs alike.
Alexander Reid
A highland polymath born in Urquhart, near Elgin in 1782 to a family of farming stock, the founder of The Macallan was a teacher of English at the Elgin Academy before becoming a tenant farmer. The seven acres of land leased by Reid from the earl of Seafield was a site well chosen.
Barley would have been farmed in surrounding fields and down on the haugh, the flat alluvial land by the river Spey. The soil drained well, the surrounding undulations and hills provided shelter, and springs in the hill ground behind the Distillery satisfied the demand for water.
A new Distillery
Not for the first time, inspiration from the world of fine wine and some of their beautifully designed wineries stimulated the idea to build not just a new Distillery capable of much greater output to meet surging demand, but to do it in a way that encompassed the spirit of The Macallan over the previous one hundred and ninety years.
It would stand testament to the quiet determination to produce the finest spirit possible, harnessing generations of experience to bring pleasure to many thousands of people. Modest above ground, stunning below ground, the new Distillery and guest experience would bridge past, present and future in the years after the first cut in the turf for the new structures in the field where, 2,500 years ago, Iron Age roundhouses once stood. The plan for the new Distillery and Visitor Experience for The Macallan was announced in 2012, the build began in 2014, and the new Distillery opened in May 2018.
It won’t just be a new Distillery;
It won’t just be a wall of glass so high
That a whisky library
Built to house all of The Macallan,
A bridge to future and past,
Will greet each visitor,
Breathtaking in detail
& the utter brilliance of design;
It won’t just be our Curiously Small Stills,
Or the curved ceilings so vast
Yet somehow soothing to sit beneath,
Or windows framing
Such perfect Speyside countryside;
It won’t just be a gentle curve of grass
On the rooftop that reminisces
Of when this site held Iron Age roundhouses;
It is not just a homage to two hundred years
Of history here, it is in fact a testament
To all whose quiet determination
Produces the finest spirit possible.
The Macallan 200 Years Young