What do perfume and Scotch whisky have in common? A lot, a lot more than you ‘d assume– as the macallan edition series No. 3, the most recent bottling in the distillery’s acclaimed series, demonstrates.
After delighting in a spritz-style welcome drink at the Champagne bar, we were invited into a larger space, ushered, The Macallan’s head of education. “Tonight,” he revealed, “we’ll allow you to have a peek inside our whisky cooking area.”
Functioning closely with The Macallan’s master whisky manufacturer, Bob Dalgarno, Dove informed us he went about crafting Edition No. 3 utilizing the same formula he would certainly for a perfume– that is, by pinpointing complementary fragrances, and also balancing these with a “counterpoint” note.
The resulting Macallan Edition No. 3 liquid is a combination of 6 various American and also European oak barrels
Tasting The Macallan Edition No. 3
It’s bottled at 48.3% abv (the.3, obviously, is a nod to the truth that it’s the third edition in the series) and also when it comes to the flavour profile– well, as opposed to sharing our scrawled tasting notes, we believed it much better to allow Dove define the whisky himself.
” I claimed to Bob, ‘What I would love for you to be able to do is this: I would certainly such a whisky that when you initially consume it, it will certainly be bright and fresh and also citrus, due to the fact that they are words that I would not personally relate to whisky,” he in-depth.
” I love the extremely vanillic toffee note that remains in The Macallan, yet there was an extremely specific flavor I enjoyed that was like when you make caramel and the butter is simply becoming the sugar and also you feel its buttery high quality.
” Yet, looking at it as a perfumer, if I only utilized these kinds of products the end result would certainly be extremely level and boring– what you need is something to counterpoint it. So in it he’s put this fantastic bitter orange note, and also it really is like if you take your thumb and also burglarize an orange and after that put your thumb onto your tongue.
” There’s a little of soft, sweet spice, and afterwards suddenly your mouth simply ends up being filled with apples. Currently, when I was extremely young my grandmother used to take the apples when they were ripe as well as lay them in little wooden trays, which she used to accumulate. The apple that you’ll find is not like when you attack into a crisp apple– it’s this nearly waxen, rich, soft, ultra-fruity apple preference.”
We can ensure you that the whisky is every bit as scrumptious as it sounds. To make the experience even more fascinating, before embarking on the project Dove was a self-confessed whisky-phobe. In fact, he when told The Macallan’s imaginative director “if we’re going to work together, you need to recognize that I absolutely despise whisky”.
” Everyone was asking yourself whether I ‘d like it,” he proceeds. “The whisky came, I tasted it, and it’s precisely how I desired it to be. Therefore I’m extremely pleased to have done this collaboration with a guy that is actually a wizard at his craft.”
If you fancy tasting buy the macallan edition 3 for yourself, you remain in good luck.