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Every week, we pick one bottle that’s worth knowing about, tell its story, and tell you how it tastes.
Ask any Macallan fan what makes the whisky taste the way it does, and the answer comes back to one word: sherry. For two centuries, The Macallan has leaned on oak casks seasoned with sherry in the south of Spain. That’s where the dried fruit, the spice and the rich colour come from.
The Macallan TIME:SPACE Sherry Cask is a whisky about that relationship. It’s a 20-year-old single malt, and it’s the first Macallan shaped by casks seasoned at the distillery’s own sherry bodega in Jerez. For a brand that has always relied on sherry from partner bodegas, that’s a quiet but big moment.
It’s also beautiful to look at, and rare. Released in autumn 2026 after an exclusive London launch, it’s the bottle collectors are talking about this season. That makes it our first Whisky of the Week.
The story: from Jerez to Speyside
The Macallan now owns Valdespino, one of the historic sherry houses of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia. Owning the bodega means the distillery can control the whole journey of its casks, from seasoning the wood with sherry in Spain to filling it with whisky in Scotland.
TIME:SPACE Sherry Cask is the first whisky to show what that means. Here’s how it was made:
- Twenty years in sherry oak. The whisky matured for 20 years on the Macallan Estate in Speyside, mostly in European oak casks seasoned with sherry.
- The first Valdespino casks. At The Macallan’s cooperages in Jerez, new casks were built and seasoned with Valdespino sherry. Of the first 200 made, most are now filled with whisky for future releases.
