The name Macallan comes from the Gaelic 'magh,' meaning fertile ground, and 'allan,' referring to the local stream. Alexander Reid's farm distillery was one of many that sprang up across Speyside after the 1823 Excise Act legalised Highland distilling. Like its neighbours Glenlivet and Cardhu, Macallan began as a seasonal operation, distilling after the harvest. What set it apart was a commitment to sherry oak casks sourced from Jerez de la Frontera in Spain -- a practice that defined the distillery's character for over a century. The sherry wood gave Macallan its distinctive colour and rich, dried-fruit flavour. In 1892, the distillery acquired its first large copper pot still, allowing a significant increase in production.

The whisky industry contracted sharply after the First World War, squeezed by Prohibition in the United States and the global economic downturn. Many distilleries closed. Macallan continued producing. In the 1930s, the distillery began ageing its whiskies for extended periods, with a twelve-year-old expression that distinguished it from competitors relying on younger spirits. This patience -- the willingness to tie up capital in barrels for a decade or more -- would prove prescient. By the time whisky collecting emerged as a serious pursuit in the late 20th century, Macallan had decades of aged stock that most distilleries lacked.

In 2018, Macallan opened a new distillery and visitor centre on the Easter Elchies estate near Craigellachie, designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners at a cost of 140 million pounds. The building was designed to sit within the landscape rather than dominate it: a series of grass-covered undulating roofs that merge into the hillside, sheltering 36 stills -- 12 wash stills and 24 spirit stills -- beneath what looks from the air like a rolling meadow. The design was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize in 2019 and won the RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award the same year. It is one of the most ambitious pieces of industrial architecture in Scotland, a building that takes the traditional distillery aesthetic -- functional, utilitarian, smoke-stacked -- and turns it inside out.

The Macallan's transformation from respected Speyside distillery to global luxury brand accelerated after Edrington acquired Highland Distillers in 1999. The Fine & Rare Collection, launched in 2002, offered aged whiskies from the distillery archives to an emerging market of wealthy collectors. A bottle of 1926 Macallan sold at Christie's for 54,000 dollars in 2007. A 64-year-old expression in a one-of-a-kind Lalique crystal decanter reached 460,000 dollars at Sotheby's in 2010, with all proceeds going to the clean water charity. Then came the 1.5 million pound bottle in 2019, and the 2.1 million pound bottle in 2023. The distillery also discovered, to its dismay, that some antique bottles in its own collection were forgeries -- whisky believed to be old that laboratory tests revealed was only ten years old, possibly supplied by a dealer with criminal connections. The Macallan stopped selling from its antique collection entirely. Standing at the Easter Elchies estate, where the building disappears into the hillside and the River Spey flows past below, the scale of what has happened here is difficult to grasp. A farm distillery, founded the same year as Glenlivet and Cardhu, now sells single bottles for the price of a house.