Richard Campbell (152:48)
And Roderick passed away in 1909, but he had been wealthy enough that he set up a trust called the Kemp Trust. And that has a huge impact on what happens in macallan Because. Because 1909 is just before World War I and you think about every distillery battles from World War I to the end of World War II, between the two wars and the Great Depression and Prohibition. But Macallan didn't have a whole lot of problem. They had enough money. So what they did was they would cut back production based on what their current, current consumption was all throughout and what the availability grain was. But they were got big into long duration aging before it was cool. They had, they literally talked about DUP doing 12 year plus agings in the 1930s. So even then you could buy a 12 year Macallan before almost anybody else had even put a age declaration on the bottle. So they, and that's before they ever use the term single malt because single malt doesn't show up until the fiddick folks think of it in the 1960s. They don't. McAllen doesn't jump on board until the 1980s. Meantime they've built out their, their site bigger and bigger and they, they have literally a couple of dozen stills. It's a big multi million liter production even in those early 60s and 70s when they largely switch over to steam. Although their stills, their spirit stills which are unusually small, were still powered by coal up until past the 2000s. So from an ownership perspective after the 1980s, 1986, Suntory bought 25% of the them. That got everybody a little anxious. And so a few years later Highland Distillers took the rest and that ultimately in 1990 gets merged into the Eden Group, which is Famous Grouse and Highland park and a few others. And the Eden Group is interesting. Like I might just have to do their story on their own at some point, but until now it's just been a sherry maker. It's not until 2004 which is when I started doing tours there, that they started doing what everybody else does, which is using American bourbon casks because they're very inexpensive and. And then they would finish in sherry casks. Now, they called that version fine oak. And you have to read the bottle very carefully to know that because it'll be in very small print on the bottom. Fine oak series, although since 2018, they now call it triple cask matured. But this one says cherry oak cask for the reason it's been only aged in sherry and that is rare. It's not a common thing because the barrels are expensive. But the Edgerton group is really smart and they made tight relationships with the sherry producers. You understand that over time, sherry production has changed. The demand for barrels was so high, you know, when Kemp was making sherry caskings, it was because they were buying sherry and casks and just reusing them. But as the demand got higher and bottles got cheaper, the casks became rarer. And so wisely, the Edgerton group made a deal with sherry producers not only to secure their own barrels, but they would actually have the barrels made and, and then casked in sherry and then they would use them to make their whiskey. They went even further than that. Today they actually make American oak casks and ship them to Yemenz to be to do three years in sherry before being brought back to make it into whiskey. Today, McAllen is in the top three, sometimes top two. It's Glen Fittick, Glenn, Livic, McAllen. Their production facilities, one of the biggest in the world, does 15 million liters a year. It is massive. 21 stainless washbacks, seven wooden swashbacks, all about 35,000 liters each. Not particularly large, but many of them. They have 12 wash stills that are the normal sort of 12,000 liter size and 24 spirit still, which are the smallest in the industry at 3900 liters. They are crazy small. And they are uniquely known for using these crazy small to the point where in the 90s there was a version of the 10 pound Scottish note printed with those stills on the back. It's a very prized note now, if you can find one. They're rare. They were distributed to the employees at the time, and I think one came up for auction for a couple of years. £100 for a 10 pound note. Macallan stuck with direct fire on their stills right up until 2010, but only for the spirit stills, not for the wash stills. Now, we all know why we don't do direct fire these days, because stuff explodes when you're making alcohol, it's dangerous. And so the normal is steam. But there's an argument that when you actually use heat on stills, you create other compounds. Now this is typical with the wash still, which have all of the dregs and so forth, the draft in them, and those get toasted because you have higher direct temperatures on that. That definitely conveys the temperature. But Macallan switched their wash stills to steam in the 1970s when everybody else did. They kept their spirit stills initially fired with coal and then they moved to natural gas. And only when they were getting really scaling up in the 2004-2010 time frame did they started gradually switching all of the stills over to steam. Which speaks to this sort of classic thing that people talk about, about older whiskeys better. But then the argument is it's produced differently. Now I also, because I repeatedly visited the Macallan distillery in the early aughts and into the tens, saw them build out the new facility which was absolutely, you know, this massive, massive facility. They started in 2014 and finished in 28. And they added huge amounts of barrel storage. Today they store over 200,000 barrels on site. There's bourbon casts in there now, but for a long time they're just a 500 liter Sherry cast, which are much larger than the traditional ones. But now they're also making American ale casks and they age them as well. What makes Macallan such a legend besides making a pretty good whiskey? They know how to market and they're, you know, they had, they got positioned in James Bond, specifically in the Daniel Craig Skyfall, where they used a macallan Fine and rare 1962 in it, which is actually a 15 year old whiskey. It just happened to have been bottled in 1977 after being distilled in 62. These are extremely rare. I don't know if Skyfall drove up the price, but the last one, it was seen in auction, they got 125,000 bucks for it. And it was a reference to the 50th anniversary of James Bond, because 1962 was the first, first James Bond movie. Dr. No they Speaking of auction, McAllen has routinely broken the record for most expensive whiskey ever sold at auction. In 2007, a bottle of the 1926 sold for 54000 bucks. Then in 2010 and we, I talked about this one before. The Lalique Perdue, which was a custom crystal bottle with 64 old year old whiskey in it, sold for $460,000 in 2019. Another 1926 sold at Sotheby's for 1.5 million pounds. That's 2 million US. And just a couple years ago, in 23, the same kind of bottle sold for 2.1 million pounds. That's almost 3 million US. But is it worth $400? And I was really debating this because it's kind of a one note whiskey. I mean, it's a very good one note whiskey. But I wonder if it's me because it's just sherry cask. And virtually every whiskey to drink today has initially been aged in bourbon because the barrels are plentiful, and then finished in sherry because the barrels are not plentiful. And is that literally changed the way we like to taste whiskey? I'm not sure. But the sherry cask is kind of special. Like I said, Macallan makes both. You can go get their triple cask series and they tend to be less expensive by quite a bit. I think the Vine Oak version of the 18 is like $300 instead of $400 because of the barrel cost differences. It's kind of a big deal. But the older versions of this. So this is the 23 release, which is, I think current. A 2013 release of this goes for $800, if you can find one. Now that seems unreasonable. Like it's basically made the same way at that point in 2013. Still agent Sherry casks. And it's not 400 for an 18 is pricey no matter what you talk about. Like Glendronach makes an 18, which is a straight sherry casking for about 200 US at 43%. It's nothing special. They probably chill filter because they say that. They don't say that. They don't. They do not use color, which is fine. You know, they don't need to. If you're going to be in a sherry, you're going to get lots of color anyway. So why buy this? Well, you shouldn't most of the time.
