The Macallan Gran Reserva is a simultaneously iconic yet confusing series of bottlings from our celebrity Speyside Scotch distillery.

Now, the Macallan has no shortfall of iconic bottlings – might even have the most quite honestly, and is really why it sometimes almost feels like Macallan knows it and couches it. It’s not all marketing – okay, maybe it is some of that, but nobody in Scotland does it better than Macallan. The distillery ensures that every year, it’s series after series, almost playing the Power Law, where if one strikes gold, that’s enough to justify 99 duds.

But that strategy works, and since its first single malt expression in 1984 (which isn’t even that long ago), no brand has racked up as many iconic bottlings. That trophy case is what underpins the brand’s confidence to keep tossing out new release after new release with little to no fear of what might be thought of the brand. It’s really one of those bigger-is-better, any-publicity-is-good-publicity, Keeping-Up-With-The-Kardashian’s marketing strategy. And yet, as I’ve mentioned ad nauseam – it works.

The Macallan Gran Reserva is a simultaneously iconic yet confusing series of bottlings from our celebrity Speyside Scotch distillery.

Now, the Macallan has no shortfall of iconic bottlings – might even have the most quite honestly, and is really why it sometimes almost feels like Macallan knows it and couches it. It’s not all marketing – okay, maybe it is some of that, but nobody in Scotland does it better than Macallan. The distillery ensures that every year, it’s series after series, almost playing the Power Law, where if one strikes gold, that’s enough to justify 99 duds.

But that strategy works, and since its first single malt expression in 1984 (which isn’t even that long ago), no brand has racked up as many iconic bottlings. That trophy case is what underpins the brand’s confidence to keep tossing out new release after new release with little to no fear of what might be thought of the brand. It’s really one of those bigger-is-better, any-publicity-is-good-publicity, Keeping-Up-With-The-Kardashian’s marketing strategy. And yet, as I’ve mentioned ad nauseam – it works.

Macallan if anything is a master of throwing out iconic releases that are almost geared at breaking auction records. It’s a bigger-is-better, any-publicity-is-good-publicity, Keeping-Up-With-The-Kardashian’s marketing strategy – that works. (Image Source: Bloomberg)

In fact, it sometimes even feels like Macallan wants its fair share of haters, so that it gets the people going. More talk – any talk – is good PR. And so the distillery daringly keeps on with the ever more luxury-centric releases (how many have come in Lalique crystal decanters now?), the ever bigger price tags, the seemingly permanent NAS fixtures. 

So love it or hate it, Macallan wants you to think of them.

Back to the Gran Reserva, it’s one of those releases that have become an iconic part of the Macallan trophy case – the real Gran Reserva, that is.

A quick search will show you that the first Gran Reserva is the 1979 edition released in 1997. This would be followed by three more sequentially chronological editions – 1980, 1981 and 1981, which were released from 1999 to 2002, all at the bottom range of the permissible ABV for Scotch, 40% ABV (we can talk about this another time). All four editions carried a somewhat old school label with cursive typefaces and a vintage sort of aesthetic, not anything you’d see on a Macallan today.

And then somehow or rather, in 2007 and 2017, two more Gran Reserva’s popped out – a 12 Year Old and a 15 Year Old respectively, both donning a more modern aesthetic, closer to what we’d identify to be a Macallan today.

Now where the hell did these come from. They looked nothing like the original series and the 12 Year Old saw a massive outturn of 90,000 bottles, while the 15 Year Old had an outturn of 1,500 bottles. The 12 Year Old was bottled at 45.6% ABV and the 15 Year Old at 43% ABV. It’s as if the word consistency meant nothing.

As it turns out, the 12 Year Old Gran Reserva – or shall we call it “Gran Reserva” or Gran Gran Reserva; how do we even demarcate these? – was a Japan and Taiwan exclusive.