“I mean, who doesn’t love to work with something like James Bond? It’s a real pleasure for us.”
That’s how Jaume Ferras, creative director at The Macallan, describes the whisky brand’s second bottle collaboration with the James Bond franchise, released this week. The Macallan Diamonds Are Forever 55th Anniversary Release is an 18-year-old single malt inspired by the movie’s storyline, which includes Bond’s forensic knowledge of red wine.
Yep, beyond the Martini, Vesper and his whisky acumen, Bond is also a wine aficionado (and that knowledge, spoiler alert, saves his life). That same expertise plays into The Macallan’s liquid, utilizing whisky aged in bespoke hybrid casks crafted from sherry-seasoned European and American oak and distillate from casks that previously held red wine.
“It’s the first time we’ve done that in a release,” says Russell Greig, one of the whisky makers at The Macallan (note: there are four whisky makers and two assistants). Admittedly, the distillery says they can’t trace exactly where the red wine originates from, but they’re definitely familiar with the hybrid casks used.
“Those are part of our stock,” Greig adds. “And we do use these casks, but this is the first time we’ve called them out.”
I was able to taste the anniversary release earlier this week. While you’ll recognize the whisky as The Macallan, it offers notes of butterscotch, berries and vanilla, with a lovely, vibrant nose and a slightly drier finish than expected. Bottled at 45.5% ABV, the brand notes that the whisky’s natural color recalls the red and orange Aztec sandstone of the Nevada desert surrounding Las Vegas, a key film location (possibly a marketing stretch, but it is a lovely hue).
The design elements on the new Bond expression should appeal to anyone who was a fan of the brand’s 2022 collaboration, which marked the 60th anniversary of the Bond film series as a whole. The new packaging draws from archival behind-the-scenes materials, production art from the movie’s development phase and some nods to the narrative elements of the film without being too on the nose about it (aka they’re not just lazily reprinting actual scenes from the movie).
A bottle shot from a February launch party in Los Angeles
Randy Shropshire/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images
“With our 60th anniversary release, we took a very specific design language,” Ferras says. “When we launched it, we saw that people had a huge interest in the archives behind James Bond. For that release, we put sketches of things that are in the movies, of course, but we also see things that are not featured in the movie. It gave it a lot of personality. And while the previous release was more about James Bond as a character, this one is less about Bond as a character and more about the actual story.”
That said, this wonderfully unexpected (and delicious) new experience from The Macallan doesn’t necessarily portend a changing of the ways for the distillery. “We’re very much about our exceptional sherry-seasoned casks here at The Macallan,” says Greig, who admits the brand has a lot of casks beyond red wine they could experiment with. “[The sherry casks] are our DNA, and that’s where our future lies as well. But it’s good as a whisky maker’s team to have these levers for building flavor and complexity.”
The Macallan Diamonds Are Forever 55th Anniversary Release is available now exclusively via The Macallan’s website and at The Macallan Estate Boutique in limited quantities for $750.
