Burnishing Luxury Status, Macallan Focuses On Single Malt’s High End

Limited-edition specialty offerings are driving a surge in interest in single malt Scotch, and the Edrington Group has been one of the main players in the movement with its Macallan brand. The company tells SND it plans to continue stoking the fires at single malt’s connoisseur level through its ongoing partnership with Lalique crystal and other upscale initiatives.

David Cox, Edrington’s director of fine and rare whiskies, says Macallan’s link with Lalique—centered around a series of six limited crystal decanters, with a new edition released every two years—has been very successful. “The whiskies in the series have been getting older and older,” Cox says, beginning with a 50-year-old and leading up to a 62-year-old as the fifth installment, due in the U.S. market in the next few months. The previous edition, a 60-year-old launched in 2011, was priced at $20,000, with 72 decanters coming to the U.S.

The upcoming 62-year-old will follow closely on the recent high-profile release of Macallan M, another project in cooperation with Lalique. Designed to sit atop the brand’s luxury 1824 range of non-age stated malts—which has been rolling out to global markets over the past two years—M is unlike many of Macallan’s limited whiskies, in that it’s not a one-off, but will be released in small quantities each year. For the first year, 1,750 decanters of M were launched globally, with 355 coming to the U.S. at a retail price of $4,500 apiece. In recent days, a special six-liter “Imperiale” decanter of M sold for $628,000 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, breaking the world record for whiskies sold at auction.

While Edrington is emphasizing Macallan’s most exclusive bottlings, the brand has also made ample progress in the broader single malt market of late through its more accessible Sherry and Fine Oak ranges. The third-largest single malt worldwide, it’s nearly doubled its share of the 5.3-million-case global category to 14% over the past decade, according to Impact Databank. The brand also has a 14% share in the 1.2-million-case U.S. single malt market, where it ranks second behind The Glenlivet. Late last year, Edrington announced that it will invest £100 million ($165m) in a new Speyside distillery for Macallan, expected to be complete in spring 2017.

“The Macallan is transitioning into a true luxury brand in the way it’s perceived and marketed,” observes Jim Brennan, vice president, whiskies and rum at Rémy Cointreau USA, Macallan’s longtime U.S. importer, which will hand those duties to the newly formed Edrington USA on April 1.

Of the surge in activity at the ultra high-end, Cox says, “We don’t make whisky for investment purposes, but we know a lot of people are buying for that reason,” adding that because of low interest rates in the U.S. and U.K., investors are hunting for new asset classes. “There’s also a craft element to whisky-making which is drawing increasing interest,” he notes, pointing to the rising tide of craft beers and spirits on both sides of the Atlantic. “These are interesting times for single malt.”

Tagged : Edrington Group, Scotch whisky, Single malt, spirits, The Macallan, whisky

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