Where The Macallan Begins: A Tasting Session That Starts in Andalusia, Not Scotland

The brand's monthly education series at The Macallan House in Central offers Hong Kong drinkers a rare look at the supply chain behind one of the world's most coveted single malts.

The invitation said whisky. What arrived, over two hours at The Macallan House on Duddell Street, was a lesson in viticulture, cooperage, and the particular obsessiveness of a distillery that has spent 200 years refusing to leave quality to chance.

Stephane Levan, The Macallan's Brand Ambassador for Hong Kong and Macau, opened proceedings with a statement that immediately reoriented the room. "For a lot of people, they think that the journey of The Macallan starts in Scotland," he said, pausing for effect. "Actually, the whole journey of The Macallan starts in Spain."

What followed was one of the more illuminating spirit education sessions available in Hong Kong, a city that, for all its sophistication around fine wine and premium spirits, rarely gets this close to the production fundamentals. Levan hosts these sessions on a monthly basis at The Macallan House. For anyone with a serious interest in Scotch whisky, attending one should be considered essential.

The Sherry Triangle and Why It Matters

The session began not with whisky but with geography. The Sherry Triangle is a designation within Andalusia, Spain's southernmost region, defined by three towns: Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa Maria. It is the only place on earth where sherry can legally be produced, and it is, Levan explained, where The Macallan's character originates.

Only three grape varieties qualify for sherry production. Palomino Fino underpins the dry styles. Pedro Ximenez and Moscatel yield the sweet varieties that leave the deepest imprint on the wood. Summer temperatures in the region can reach 50 degrees Celsius in direct sun, making harvesting a nocturnal operation. Workers move through the vineyards from midnight until approximately five in the morning, racing to deliver fruit to the winery before heat begins to degrade quality.

The sherry that seasons The Macallan's casks is produced through two distinct ageing methods. Biological ageing, conducted beneath a protective layer of flor yeast that seals the wine from oxygen, produces lighter, mineral-driven wines. Oxidative ageing, with full exposure to air, produces the darker, richer profiles with pronounced nutty and dried-fruit characteristics.

During the session, guests tasted both styles. A Fino from Valdespino, The Macallan's partner producer, was strikingly pale and almost saline on the nose, demonstrating how little the flor-protected wine would transform a cask. More arresting was El Candado, a Pedro Ximenez from the same house, its viscosity visible as it clung to the inside of the glass. At 400 grams of sugar per litre, derived entirely from sun-dried grapes, it read closer to liquid confection than wine. The implication for oak seasoning was obvious.

The tasting context mattered because of what The Macallan has done, systematically, to control it.

In September 2024, the distillery's parent company, Edrington, announced the formation of Tevasa Forestal Group, a joint venture in which The Macallan holds a 50 percent ownership stake. The new entity combines the Tevasa cooperage in Jerez, which has produced European oak casks for the brand for over 40 years, with Forestal Peninsular and Forestal Peninsular de Cantabria, two sawmills in Lugo and Cantabria that source oak from forests in northern Spain and southern France.

This announcement concluded a series of investments that began in March 2023, when The Macallan acquired a 50 percent stake in Grupo Estevez, the family behind Valdespino Sherries, along with its vineyards and bodegas. Six months later, the distillery acquired the Vasyma cooperage in Jerez, specialising in American oak casks, and entered a joint venture with Coopers Oak, a sawmill in Ohio that supplies American oak staves to Vasyma.

The result is a level of vertical integration that Levan described without understatement. "Ever since last June 2025, The Macallan owns the finest sherries and broker casks in the world," he told the group. "No other whiskey brand as I speak today comes close to that."

That claim can be evaluated against the facts of the partnership. The Macallan now has ownership positions reaching back to the forest, through the sawmill, through the cooperage, through the sherry producer, and finally into the seasoning process itself. Casks are filled with sherry at Valdespino facilities for 18 to 24 months before any whisky touches them. The distillery specifies the oak dimensions, the toasting level, and the seasoning duration. Nothing is left to the supplier's discretion.

Igor Boyadjian, Managing Director of The Macallan, framed the investment in terms of heritage rather than commercial strategy. "As we celebrate The Macallan's 200th anniversary, this further expansion of our supply chain will ensure our reputation for richness and complexity for generations to come."

One of the session's more counterintuitive moments came during Levan's explanation of the solera ageing system used for sherry production. Unlike Scotch whisky, where age statements reflect the minimum time liquid has spent in cask, sherry vintages are not fixed. The solera is a dynamic system of stacked barrels, with older wine drawn from the bottom tier and replenished by younger wine from above. The age on a sherry label represents an average rather than a discrete vintage.

Some casks within Valdespino's soleras carry wine that is approaching 100 years old. Levan described one such example as "literally a liquid history in a glass," a phrase that applied with equal accuracy to the El Candado we were tasting, and, by extension, to the casks that will eventually travel north to Speyside.

Hong Kong occupies a specific position in the global single malt market. The city's duty-free status, gifting culture, and high concentration of affluent consumers have made it a bellwether for premium Scotch performance across Asia. The global whisky market reached approximately 78 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected to continue growing, with Asia Pacific leading expansion through the 2030s across markets including China, India, and Japan.

The Macallan leads the secondary market by both value and volume, a position reinforced by the kind of provenance storytelling that Levan delivers each month in Central. For a Hong Kong audience accustomed to evaluating luxury goods on the basis of heritage, craftsmanship, and supply chain integrity, the sherry cask narrative is not incidental to The Macallan's appeal. It is the appeal.

Attend the Next Session

The sessions reward curiosity. By the time the first whisky glass was raised, the room understood exactly what it was drinking, and why the glass smelled the way it did.

As Levan put it, with the Fino still on the table and the El Candado catching the light: "That veil is actually protecting the wine from oxidation... your wine at the end will be very, very, very dry."

The Macallan is betting, with the receipts to prove it, that the opposite of dry is where the real value lies.

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The Macallan House is located in Central, Hong Kong. Monthly tasting sessions are available by private invitation and booking. 

All images Vincent Tsang 
Words.P.Ramakrishnan