Macallan Distillery

Maybe the most prominent of all the Speyside whiskies is the Macallan. I like to think about it like this: What Lagavulin is of the Islay whiskies, is the Macallan of the Speyside whiskies: the king of all. (At least I thought so until I learnt about the Mortlach. Now I am not so sure who is the best...)
But it was surprisingly difficult to find the distillery. Maybe our fault, but we needed more than one hour, asking people several times, getting different answers... The gentleman at Aberlour even shew us the distillery over the hills in the distance. Finally we found it. From the outside this distillery looks astonishingly industrial. You would not expect a whisky as complex, subtil, smooth, round, fiery as the Macallan to be made in such profane looking buildings...

Most impressive was a glass vitrine in the visitor centre. It displayed many many different Macallan whiskies, but all in the same design, each labeled with the dist. year in very bold font. Almost all years of the second half of the last century was there! Impressive. (In the meantime I read that the some of the older of those were even rebottled in order to ensure the consistent design of this series.) See the photo below.
There are also many different bottlings offered for sale, more than in any other distillery we saw, but - the prices are also very impressive. And the more standard versions are well available in Austria, so we did not buy something here except for the obligatory tot glass.

The Macallan distillery

Macallan distillery

Macallan distillery still house

The Macallan vintage series display