The Macallan builds its identity around six pillars, from its small stills to its sherry-seasoned oak casks.
But in truth, a single bottle has done more than any of them to elevate it.
The Macallan 1926, the first bottle of wine or spirit to exceed $2m at auction, has shaped the distillery’s position as the world’s most collected Scotch whisky.
There were just 40 bottles of that 60-year-old vintage, extracted in 1986. They were never sold publicly; instead, they were handed to private clients over several years. The first known private sale in 1987 valued the bottle at a then-record of $8,000. Since then, examples of the 1926 have improved on the record a further six times, and traded for over $1m on eight occasions since 2018.
“It arrived in the market as the most expensive thing you could buy, and it’s never yielded that position,” says Jonny Fowle, global head of spirits at Sotheby’s and lead auctioneer the last time the bottle sold in 2023, for $2.7m. “It stands above the industry and has power over the industry. Anytime the 1926 is sold, it’s going to be front-page news.”
For The Macallan, the 1926 remains its strongest brand asset, but four decades on, it is also the benchmark for everything that follows. Now it’s tackling that benchmark head-on with the Romantica Collection, a new 1986 vintage unapologetically pitched as the natural successor to Scotch whisky’s most celebrated and valuable bottle.
Romantica is cut from the same cloth as the 1926: an exceptional Scotch whisky aged in a single first-fill sherry-seasoned oak cask. The poetic connection comes from the year 1986: this liquid started its maturation in the same year the 1926 was extracted from Cask #263.
The label design further strengthens the bond. The same three artists who collaborated on bottle designs for the 1926 (pop artists Sir Peter Blake and Valerio Adami, and landscape artist Michael Dillon) are back. Each has created a label in their distinct style to form a three-bottle collection, of which only 86 exist.
Sir Peter Blake, the artist behind The Beatles’ iconic Sergent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, has created his signature collage of a hedonistic party happening outside Easter Elchies House in 1986. Adami has produced an interpretation of Janet Harbinson, the woman in charge of The Macallan when the 1926 was filled into cask. Dillon, who hand-painted a single bottle of 1926 for Fortnum & Mason, has produced a landscape scene celebrating Scotland’s rich natural environment.
Dillon was still establishing himself in the art world when he painted that bottle of whisky and today is a spritely 68-year-old. By comparison, both Sir Peter and Adami were at the top of their games in 1986 and are now in their 90s. While the gift of creativity never wanes, both have earned the right to a quiet retirement. How did The Macallan coax them back into their studios?
“It was an easy conversation”, says global creative director Jaume Ferràs. “Peter and Valerio are in a moment in time where they are reflecting a lot about their life – what they’ve done right, and what they’ve done wrong. They’re very conscious of legacy. I think the chance to go back 40 years after 1986 offered them a bit of nostalgia, but also the opportunity to build their legacy a little bit more.”
If recreating the magic outside the bottle was easy, repeating the feat inside was not. Some of the qualities that set 1986 apart are not only unrepeatable but unpalatable to today’s market. Fowle says: “The 1926 was a real world first. Sixty-year-old whisky in 1986 was crazy, given that The Macallan released the first 50-year-old in 1983. Only three years later, they managed to add a whole decade on.”
The market is now used to very old whisky and increasingly indifferent. The record for the oldest Scotch has been broken four times since 2021, twice by The Macallan. Romantica, at 39 years old, doesn’t rely on age. You may think that gave lead whisky maker Euan Kennedy a wider selection of casks to choose from, but you’d be wrong.
“When you get to that age in the inventory, there’s just a handful of casks, and we are very close to them. When we knew what we wanted to do, the flavor that was in the glass, we felt it had to be this one.”
Euan Kennedy
“The whisky-making team gets a handle on absolutely every single cask by the time it’s eight years old,” Kennedy says. “And it’s when we’re looking at those casks, even at that early age, that we’re earmarking them for the future. In any given year, it might just be five or six that we think could tell a specific story in the future, even though we don’t know what that story is.
“When we started work on the 1986 project, it was almost like there could only be one. When you get to that age in the inventory, there’s just a handful of casks, and we are very close to them. When we knew what we wanted to do, the flavor that was in the glass, we felt it had to be this one.”
It’s easy to see why when you taste it. On the nose, it is layered with stewed orchard fruit and ginger, alongside a faint tropical lift of lychee. The palate follows with peach, lychee, dark cherry, and aged oak. For all its character and complexity, it is an unmistakable hint of peat smoke that defines it. The Macallan has not used peat in its production since 1988, and that subtle wisp places it firmly in another era.
There are, however, indications that the marketing team has made key decisions around the bottling. The fact that there are 86 sets falls neatly in line with the 1986 narrative. At this level, liquid is always set aside for private tastings and for the archives, and choosing to bottle an exact amount is uncontroversial, albeit annoying for the 87th person on The Macallan’s outreach list.
The decision to bottle at 48.6% ABV is harder to ignore. Whisky makers such as Kennedy will tell you they bottle at the absolute perfect drinking strength – no ifs, no buts. But if the number of sets has been artificially manufactured to fall in line with 1986, then it’s safe to assume the liquid’s alignment with that number is no coincidence. Yes, it drinks very well at that strength, but for the price – $105,000 for the collection – anything that strikes as remotely contrived undermines the good work.
Still, the Romantica Collection will be an easy sell to The Macallan’s long list of private clients. What will be more interesting is seeing how it fares on the secondary market. “I’ve got strict guidelines around collecting,” says Fowle. “Is the brand strong? Does it have transparency of information? Is it vintage specific? How limited is it? Is it of good quality?
“Having tasted it, I would say the quality is very good. I was really impressed by it. And then only 86 sets, by Macallan standards it is extremely rare, and that is really refreshing. It is what people have been asking for: genuine scarcity. That makes it a good collectible.”
And what effect will this have on the 1926? “This release is more a celebration of 1986, not 1926,” says Fowle. “I don’t think that has any real effect on the 1926 itself. That remains a unique entity. If one came to auction today, I suspect it would break its own record.”
