Macallan Terra Quest Collection Travel Retail Exclusive Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky (2017) 70cl
A delicious single malt whisky from Macallan’s Quest Collection, Terra is a complex whisky with a distinctive flavour of toffee, dried fruits and rich, woody spices. Aged exclusively in first-fill sherry casks, Terra has a golden amber colour, and aromas of dried fruits, citrusy lemon and toffee. The palate brings flavours of ripening apple and ginger, and finishes with sweet dried fruits and woody spices.
The Macallan Terra tells the story of discovery through a complex, yet balanced single malt, aged in exclusively selected first fill sherry-seasoned oak casks, whose journey spans 10,000 miles.
Matured exclusively in first-fill European and American oak casks sourced from two of the most distinguished family cooperages, The Macallan Terra honours the very best of sherry-seasoned oak from both continents.
Celebrating the wonders of spirit maturation, this is a whisky with a distinctive character of toffee, sweet dried fruit and rich wood spices.
Displaying the bark of the oak tree, The Macallan Terra marks the discovery of the journey, grounded in a defining moment.
Macallan Terra is a unique single malt whiskey that showcases the authentic essence of the Scottish Highlands. This remarkable release is created using carefully selected sherry-seasoned oak casks, giving the whiskey its distinctive flavor and deep colour.
The aroma of Macallan Terra is inviting with notes of dried fruit, orange peel and a touch of spice. When you take the first sip, your taste buds will be treated to complex flavours of dried fruit, dark chocolate and spices such as cinnamon and ginger. This mixture of sweetness and spice creates a balanced and harmonious taste experience.
The whiskey has a rich and silky consistency that glides elegantly across the palate and leaves a long and pleasant aftertaste. Macallan Terra is a masterpiece of quality and craftsmanship, created to be enjoyed and appreciated.
Whether you are a whiskey connoisseur or new to the whiskey journey, Macallan Terra will impress you with its rich flavor profile and sophisticated character. Let yourself be enchanted by this exceptional single malt whiskey and experience true Scottish craftsmanship in every drop.
Tasting Notes
Nose : Dried fruits are tempered by lemon zest, toffee and light ginger. Aged oak rises.
Palate : Sweet dried fruits, subtle tones of ripening apple. Heavy and fresh on the palate
Finish : Medium length. Dried fruit and wood spices
About Macallan
Macallan is an excellent example of the significance of size on whisky character. It is a large producer certainly, but its spirit stills are small (3,900 litres). This is a major contributing factor to the rich and oily nature of its new make.
Even with an extremely tight (ie small) cut there is little time for copper to do its lightening job on spirit vapour in tiny stills the lyne arms of which are so acutely angled. The opposite applies to maturation, however, where the balance between large and small is more fully revealed.
That heavy new make then goes into large, predominantly 500-litre ex-Sherry casks (made of both European and American oak). A large surface-to-volume ratio means that maturation will take longer – Macallan, it is widely agreed, hits its stride fully in its mid-teens. A heavy new make will also require longer in cask to lose any vestigial sulphurous notes. The nature of the extractives in the European oak (higher levels of tannin, powerful clove and resinous aromas) also needs a heavy spirit to achieve balance. American oak, on the other hand, adds and enhances sweetness.
No colour adjustment takes place at Macallan, meaning that each vatting needs to not only replicate the previous one in terms of aroma and taste, but must hit the same hue, despite every cask having a different tint. It is this understanding of the way in which colour is an indication of character which was behind whisky-maker Bob Dalgarno’s creation of the ‘1824 Range’ in 2013.
One of the original farm distilleries of Speyside, Macallan became legal in 1824 when Alexander Reid obtained (or was persuaded to obtain) one of the new licences issued after the passing of the 1823 Excise Act. In 1868, James Stuart took the lease and rebuilt the plant. His ownership ended in 1892, when he sold Macallan to one of the giants of Victorian distilling, Roderick Kemp, who had previously owned Talisker. Kemp’s descendants – in particular the Shiach family – retained ownership until the 1996 takeover by Highland Distillers (now Edrington).
The plant has continually been expanded from its original wooden shed with two stills. It was increased to five stills (two wash, three spirit) in 1954 and then more significantly in 1965 when a new stillhouse with seven stills was built. This process continued throughout the 1970s with the total number of stills reaching 21 by 1975.
For a distillery which has become synonymous with the growth of single malt, it is worth remembering that Macallan has always been an important malt for blending. It wasn’t until the early 1980s, faced with a downturn in the market for fillings, that Macallan decided to focus more strongly on the then new single malt category.
The management team of Allan Shiach, Frank Newlands, Hugh Mitcalfe and Willie Phillips oversaw a campaign which both positioned the malt as a 'first-growth whisky' it called 'the Cognac of whisky', while always retaining a somewhat bohemian and irreverent approach to advertising and promotion.
A firm belief in the fusion of the oily, heavy, new make style and ex-Sherry casks saw Macallan, under Edrington’s governance, become the first distillery to create so-called ‘bespoke’ casks: selecting specific trees (predominantly in northern Spain, though some American oak is specified), and then with Jerez-based cooper Tevasa specifying the length and nature of drying, type of coopering, the liquid used for seasoning (oloroso) and the duration of that process. Investment in wood has increased significantly in recent years, with a complex of massive warehouses being built on the estate.
In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed on the nascent luxury whisky market with bottlings of 50- and 60-year-old Macallan in Lalique decanters, the creation of the Fine & Rare vintage range dating back to 1926, and the Masters of Photography series.
This has not been without controversy. Its growing status as a collectable malt saw Macallan become the victim of fakers in the late 1990s. The subsequent investigation has, however, helped establish a methodology to check the authenticity of suspicious bottlings.
On a whisky-making front, 2004 saw the introduction of Fine Oak, where American oak ex-Sherry casks and some ex-Bourbon casks were used in a mirror range to the ‘classic’ 100% ex-Sherry range. Though old Macallan lovers protested, the lighter, sweeter, flavour profile brought in new drinkers, mostly in new markets.
The 1824 Range, a four-strong series not carrying age statements which replaced some of the younger expressions in the portfolio, followed in 2013, using whisky colour as a communication and branding device.
The second stillhouse was brought back on stream in 2008, and in 2013 it was announced that a completely new, £100m distillery was to be built.
The new distillery – a distinctive subterranean design – was commissioned on 9 November 2017 and opened officially in May 2018, at a final cost of £140m
43.8 ABV
70cl
