Julie Macklowe knows business—thanks to her ventures in finance, fashion, and luxury skincare. She also knows whisky. Her New York City apartment, perched high above Fifth Avenue, has a private tasting room that offers sweeping views of Central Park—and a whisky library filled with rare bottles of Ardbeg, Springbank, Glenlivet, Laphroaig, Macallan, and many more. Some date back to the 1960s, others to the 1950s.
Macklowe’s collection fills one entire wall of the tasting room and continues behind hidden doors throughout. Open one wall panel, and you’ll find Hermes boxes surrounded by vintage Bowmore. That doesn’t include some opened bottles on an upper floor of this triplex apartment, or those stored at her Hamptons summer home. In total, Macklowe has over 2,000 whiskies in her collection.
This passion for whisky ultimately led to the creation of a business venture: a whisky called The Macklowe American single malt.
“I was looking at my own collection, and observed that I have Canadian, Japanese, Irish, Taiwanese, and all sorts of scotch, but nothing that was made in American and also luxury,” she explains. “So I decided to create a high-end American single malt. Spirits is a crowded arena, but American single malt is different, especially when it comes to the luxury end.”
This light bulb moment came about six years ago, and Macklowe took it and ran.
Though she may be an ardent whisky lover, she’s neither distiller nor blender, and so she tapped Ian MacMillan, a master distiller and blender with 50 years of experience in scotch, whose body of work includes Glengoyne, Deanston, Bladnoch, Bunnahabhain, and others. Next, Macklowe locked down a distilling partner: Kentucky’s Wilderness Trail. “Pat [Heist] and Shane [Baker] of Wilderness Trail are experts on yeast, and all that goes into single malt is malted barley, water, and yeast,” she explains. She initially spoke with distillers from New York, but found that it was difficult to source Adirondack wood, and she wanted a whiskey from just one state. The Pacific Northwest was too far away, though she did do a small initial release from Oregon. That was The Macklowe Private Collection (or Black label), a 9 year old American single malt sourced from Bull Run in Oregon, aged in Kentucky, and selling at $1,500. Texas was also considered, but there was concern over high evaporation rates. So she landed on Kentucky.
The resulting whiskey, The Macklowe Kentucky Edition, which Macklowe refers to as the Gold label because of its gold packaging, is entirely Kentucky-made, from the grains to the water to the distillation and barrels. It is on the market, though you may have a hard time finding it: the inaugural 888-bottle run sold out, though another 2,000 bottles are coming before year-end. But even then, you may be hard-pressed to find a bottle at retail, given that Macklowe is focused on Michelin-starred fine dining and dramming—in New York City, for example, that means Jean-Georges, Mastro’s, Eleven Madison Park, the Polo Bar, and other venues, where she foresees a Macklowe Manhattan or a “Gold Fashioned” cocktail (both made with the Gold label single malt) selling at $48 a pop.
Gold label is a more accessible than the inaugural Black, as it’s priced far lower at $250 a bottle. The flavors, too, are more youthful, given that it’s aged for just under four years. “It has a tropical nose, but also sweet oak, honey, maple, everything you’d expect from char-3 new American oak [which the whiskey is aged in],” says Macklowe. “We started it intentionally in new American oak, and not an older cask, because we’re not trying to mimic Scotland. We’re trying to do this in an American way, and so we’ve created a fully American product.”
Macklowe hopes that American single malt will become more recognized at restaurants and at retail. “In the past, it has been put under lists of ‘other whiskeys,’ or with bourbons or scotch, as they just don’t know where to put us.” But as more American single malts arrive, she feels that will change. She’s eager to plant her flag at the luxury end, where right now there are no other competitors. “I want to be the Dom Perignon of American single malt,” she says. “I want be a coveted luxury item, and do everything with the best quality and craftsmanship.”
