The Macallan's Global Twist

To understand the complexity of making one of the world's finest single malts, journey not to Speyside, Scotland, but to Andalucia, Spain.

- Geeta Rao

Whisky has its closely guarded secrets, and while it slumbers to maturation, thousands of molecular fissions take place, which make the final mature liquid so tantalizingly complex. What goes on inside the whisky cask is a mystery, perhaps revealed only to the Master of Whisky. But so much depends on the cask itself.

That's why I'm in southern Spain, in the Andalusian city of Jerez de La Frontera, known more popularly as Jerez and pronounced as Herez. The culturally rich town is famous as the birthplace of flamenco, Spain's signature folk dance and music, the dancing Andalusian horses, the great Carthusian thoroughbreds, and a renowned motorcycle GP circuit. But above all, it is the world capital of sherry, the well-known fortified wine that has driven the region's economy for centuries. In fact, the name sherry is a derivation of Sherish, the old Moorish name for the city that later became Jerez.

Look closely at every Macallan Single Malt bottle and its packaging, and you will see the assertive mention of sherry casks, an acknowledgment that the bodegas and cooperages of Jerez and their great sherry traditions are an intrinsic part of the whisky's famous heritage.

So, while the wind sings to the barley in Scotland, the whisky's cask story unfolds in southern Spain. Wood is considered mandatory for ageing whisky, and its quality matters enough for The Macallan experts to look at its age, quality, and seasoning before it is made into a cask. And the wood, in this case, comes from the oak tree. The oak casks of The Macallan are responsible for 100 percent of its colour and up to 80 percent of the final flavour, so one can imagine their exceptional contribution to the creation of the final whisky that makes its way into the bottle.