Usually referred to as 'The' Macallan by the owners and their marketing people, The Macallan was one of the first distillers in Scotland to be legally licensed. Since then they have built a reputation as one of the world’s leading single malt whiskies.
The Macallan distillery was founded by Alexander Reid, a barley farmer and school teacher. The original name of the area was “Maghellan”, taken from the Gallic word “magh”, meaning fertile ground and “Ellan”, from the Monk St.Fillan - who held a close association with the church that stood in the grounds of The Macallan Estate until 1400.
At one time Macallan proudly stated that is was matured in oak sherry casks. Now it seems that a lot of the whisky is matured in bourbon casks. Nothing wrong with that at all, apart from the fact that sherry matured Macallan is now very hard to get hold of. More recent changes have seen it move away from age statements with the new 1924 range all being release as 'NAS' (no age statement) whiskies. There are 9 wash stills and 18 spirit stills at Macallan and it makes around 8,000,000 litres of alcohol per year.
