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hello and welcome to the whisky channel!
Today we'll visit Speyside
with the Macallan Amber.
It is part of a series of 4 expressions
called the 1824 series.
This is the year when the Macallan distillery was created.
In this series you have the Gold,
the Amber,
the Sienna,
and the Ruby.
The first two are bottled at 40 %ABV.
The last two at 43% ABV.
What they all have in common is that they have matured in sherry casks.
The underlying marketing concept of the 1824 series
is, one:
only colour matters,
and, two:
no age statement.
Only quality matters.
On the whisky channel,
we already talked about those distilleries that add caramel to their whisky
officially to homogenize the colour of the batches.
Remember that even a single malt is the result
of the vatting of multiple casks from the same distillery.
Some distilleries do it for a bad reason.
To make their whisky look darker.
This misleads some novice consumers
who think that the darker a whisky is, the better it is.
The Macallan - they are not the only ones -
try to distance themselves from this practice
by setting the tone, if I may say,
Gold, Amber, Sienna, Ruby: what you see is what you get.
No artificial colouring. No cheating on colour.
Now, we'll proceed to point number two.
If there's no colouring, this means that the colour only comes from the cask
the whisky has been aged in.
The more you're moving forward in ther series, the darker the whiskies get,
so the older they are.
So how old are they?
They won't tell you.
The official line at The Macallan's is that they bottle the product
when it's needed, when it tastes right.
In stores, liquor stockists around you,
you may have noticed more and more expressions with no age statement.
They are called NAS, for No Age Statement.
Ardbeg does it, Bruichladdich does it too.
You may also have seen the Talisker Storm recently.
There's an economical reason for this.
There's an increasing worldwide demand for whisky.
And the older casks are getting increasingly rare.
So to meet the production demands,
distilleries tend to add younger whiskies in their mix.
At the Macallan's,
they try to explain you that age statements are square.
This is marketing of course, but with real arguments behind it.
As a matter of fact,
people often associate age with quality,
which may be untrue,
and we all know someone that claims
that he would never drink a whisky that is under 18 years of age, for instance.
There is snobbery around this.
So all in all, what is The Macallan Amber worth?
What is it all about?
Let's find out.
Delicate nose.
Apples and sultanas.
Subtly winy,
very honeyed nose.
Full-bodied,
with a lot of sherry,
medium-sweet,
Chocolate emerges when you swallow it,
Light finish,
maybe too light.
Along with cream, walnuts and herbs.
You can feel the youth of the product.
But a well-crafted product.
This is an accessible, easy to drink whisky.
Well balanced.
Like many Speyside whiskies,
like other Macallan expressions,
such as the 12 yo Fine Oak, that you discussed here.
To me, this may taste like just like people imagine a whisky would taste,
if this means anything!
You can find this whisky in department stores
between 40 and 45€.
See you on a next episode!