Macallan Harmony Collection, New Compass Box, Yellowstone Toasted, & More [New Releases]

From Scotland this week, Macallan is out with the third edition in its Harmony Collection, this one created in collaboration with two of Paul McCartney's daughters—fashion designer Stella McCartney and photographer Mary McCartney. Compass Box has a new creation, Art & Decadence, blended from a rich, malty array of cask finishings. On the American whiskey scene, the very prolific Barrell Craft Spirits has a nicely affordable item in Barrell Foundation at $60, its first non-cask strength whiskey. Pinhook, meanwhile, has a truly unique concept in its Vertical Series, which follows the progress of 1,350 barrels of high-rye, MGP bourbons as they age over the course of time. First launched in 2019, the project will conclude in 2027, and this week we're greeted with Pinhook Vertical 8. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Verticals seem to be improving with each release, though opinions will vary on that, which is all part of the fun. Plenty of other releases are here for your browsing pleasure, including the first edition in Yellowstone Distillery's Special Finishes Collection, as well as a new bourbon from Old Elk, and more. So read on.

SCOTCH WHISKY

Macallan Harmony Collection Amber Meadow
Style: Single malt
Origin: Scotland (Speyside)
Age: Not stated
ABV: 44.2%
Price: $210
Release: October 2023 (U.S. availability in December 2023)
Availability: Limited edition available at premium retailers, Macallan Estate Bar, and the Macallan online boutique.
Macallan Harmony Collection Green Meadow
Style: Single malt
Origin: Scotland (Speyside)
Age: Not stated
ABV: 40.2%
Price: $185
Release: October 2023
Availability: Limited edition available at Macallan airport boutiques including JFK and other key airport stores

Need to know:
Macallan has collaborated with fashion designer Stella McCartney and photographer Mary McCartney for the next edition in the annual Harmony Collection. Matured in sherry-seasoned oak casks and bourbon casks, only Amber Meadow will be released in the U.S. market, with Green Meadow available in Travel Retail.

Whisky Advocate says:
Stella and Mary McCartney were inspired by their time spent in Scotland as children, as their father Paul McCartney bought and renovated a farm near Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre in the late 1960s during the last years of The Beatles. (Those years also inspired the McCartney song "Mull of Kintyre", which became one of the biggest-selling singles of all time.) The cartons of these releases are made with discarded meadow cuttings and include photographs of the Macallan estate taken by Mary McCartney. The sisters also produced Together: A Collection for the Macallan, working with different craftspeople to produce a unique set of 11 lifestyle pieces including handmade glassware in vibrant shades, a brass napkin weight in the shape of an acorn, and a lambswool blanket. Macallan is also offering the Harmony Hideaway throughout December, a bookable lounge experience at the distillery where guests can explore the collection and sample the Harmony Collection expressions.
Compass Box Art & Decadence
Style: Blend
Origin: Scotland
Age: Not stated
ABV: 49%
Price: $180
Release: November 2023
Availability: Limited global release of 9,126 bottles

Need to know:
Compass Box’s lead whisky maker James Saxon’s latest limited-edition blend is intended for consumption with rich puddings, cheese, and chocolate at the end of a fine meal. With a malt content of nearly 80%, the named whiskies in the blend come from Balmenach, Glen Moray, and Linkwood distilleries with grain whisky predominantly from the closed Port Dundas Distillery.

Whisky Advocate says:
A wide variety of different single malts in multiple cask types helped Saxon create the rich flavors in Art & Decadence. Balmenach whiskies initially matured in bourbon barrels were divided between marsala, madeira, and sauternes casks for a finishing period of 10 months; these whiskies make up over 40% of the recipe. Balmenach Distillery is the least known of the component whiskies in this recipe, as it’s not currently bottled as a single malt brand. It’s a traditional Speyside distillery, built on a tributary of the Spey above Cromdale, equipped with a copper-topped mashtun, wooden washbacks, and three pairs of copper pot stills connected to worm tub condensers. The Balmenach whiskies were blended with Glen Moray finished for three years in first-fill oloroso sherry seasoned butts, Linkwood matured in first-fill palo cortado seasoned butts, and Port Dundas single grain whisky matured in refill sherry casks. Like other Compass Box blends, the recipe also contains a small percentage of blended scotch matured in re-charred American oak barrels.

AMERICAN WHISKEY

Barrell Foundation
Style: Blend of straight bourbons
Origin: IN, KY, MD, and TN
Age: Not stated
ABV: 50%
Price: $60
Release: October 2023
Availability: Nationwide

Need to know:
This is Barrell’s first non-cask strength whiskey. It’s a blend of 8 year old Kentucky bourbon, 5, 6, and 9 year old Indiana bourbons, 8 year old Tennessee bourbon, and 5 and 6 year old Maryland bourbons. Altogether, the whiskey’s mashbill is 73% corn, 23% rye, and 4% malted barley.

Whisky Advocate says:
Foundation joins Barrell Vantage as an ongoing release from Barrell, which is more widely known for its array of one-off batches. The blend won’t be the exact same each year, with variations in mashbill, age, and origin. Barrell, which got its start in 2013, opened a 31,000-square-foot blending facility in Jefferson, Kentucky last month; it features eight 64,000-gallon blending tanks and greatly increases the blender’s capacity.

Pinhook Vertical 8
Style: Blend of straight bourbons
Origin: Indiana
Age: 8 year old
ABV: 57.3%
Price: $90
Release: October 2023
Availability: Limited

Need to know:
This whiskey is a blend of bourbons from 120 MGP-sourced barrels. It has a mashbill of 75% corn, 20.5% rye, and 4.5% malted barley.

Whisky Advocate says:
Pinhook’s Vertical bourbon series launched in 2019 with a 4 year old whiskey; the blender acquired 1,350 barrels from MGP, and is showcasing how they age, with a final release planned for 2027, at which point the bourbon will be 12 years old. Each year, the Vertical series features a different thoroughbred racehorse on its label; this year, that horse is Bourbon War. Pinhook is aged and blended at Castle & Key in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Yellowstone Special Finishes Collection Toasted
Style: Bourbon
Origin: Kentucky
Age: Not stated
ABV: 50%
Price: $50
Release: October
Availability: Nationwide

Need to know:
Toasted is the inaugural bottling in Limestone Branch Distillery’s Special Finishes Collection, a permanent label in the brand’s lineup. What’s in the bottle is 4 year old Yellowstone bourbon that is then finished with five varieties of staves named for the aromas and flavors they imparted on the bourbon: double-toasted American oak, high toast, vanilla, rickhouse, and spice rack.

Whisky Advocate says:
Limestone Branch Distillery was opened in 2011 by seventh-generation distiller Stephen Beam. The Yellowstone label was introduced in 2015. This year the distillery will be donating $250,000 to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Old Elk Cigar Cut Island Blend (2023)
Style: Bourbon
Origin: Colorado
Age: 8 year old
ABV: 55.85%
Price: $130
Release: October 2023
Availability: Limited; available nationwide

Need to know:
Old Elk’s 2023 version of Cigar Cut is a blend of whiskeys from Old Elk’s Cask Finish series: high-malt straight bourbon, straight rye, and straight wheat whiskey finished in port, sauternes, sherry, and rum barrels. They’re aged for a minimum of 6 years before undergoing a secondary maturation for 2 years.

Whisky Advocate says:
This release marks production manager Melinda Maddox’s debut in making whiskey. Maddox’s background is in bartending, and she joined Old Elk in 2019 as beverage director and lead mixologist for its tasting room. Now, after a three-year-long apprenticeship under master distiller Greg Metze, Maddox is slated to step into the role of master blender for the brand. While a formal announcement on that move has yet to come, it's expected soon.

Nelson Brothers Rye
Style: Rye
Origin: Kentucky
Age: Not stated
ABV: 46.25%
Price: $37
Release: October
Availability: Distillery and nationwide

Need to know:
Since 2016 Bardstown Bourbon Co. has been barreling this rye, made to Nelson’s Green Brier’s specifications. The average age of the whiskey is 5 years old.

Nelson Brothers Cask Series Cognac Cask Finished
Style: Bourbon
Origin: Indiana and Kentucky
Age: Not stated
ABV: 48.35%
Price: $90
Release: October
Availability: Limited; distillery and nationwide

Need to know:
Nelson Brothers Classic bourbon, sourced from Indiana and Kentucky, is finished at Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in cognac casks for 3-13 months.

Whisky Advocate says:
Nelson's Green Brier Distillery is located in Marathon Village, a cluster of buildings just a few minutes from downtown Nashville that's the former home of Marathon Motorworks. Today it serves as a complex for retail, business, and entertainment. Nelson's was founded in 2009 and got its start with sourced whiskey for its Belle Meade label. Distilling began in 2014, although sourcing and blending continue. Belle Meade Cask Strength was the No.-10 whisky in our Top 20 of 2018 and Nelson Bros. Reserve landed at No. 10 in 2022. This summer, a distillery expansion was completed to include a bar, restaurant, and open-air garden.

Milam & Greene Free-Tailed Bat Single Barrel
Style: Bourbon
Origin: Tennessee
Age: 7 year old
ABV: 63.4%
Price: $150
Release: October 2023
Availability: 130 bottles; available at the Milam & Greene tasting room and online at milamandgreenewhiskey.com

Need to know:
This single barrel bourbon follows a mashbill of 84% corn, 8% rye, and 8% malted barley. It was aged for nearly 5 and a half years in Tennessee before being sent to Texas, where it rested for another 2 years before being bottled at cask strength.

Whisky Advocate says:
The Texas-based Milam & Greene was founded by whisky author Heather Greene and master distiller Marlene Holmes. Free-Tailed Bat Single Barrel is the fourth whiskey in its animal-themed Wildlife Collection, which aims to showcase Texas’s climate’s impact on whiskey—hence the separate aging processes. This one gets its name from a species of bat that occasionally finds lodging in the distillery’s rickhouses.

The Beverly Reserve
Style: American
Origin: Iowa
Age: Not stated
ABV: 58%
Price: $80
Release: October
Availability: 550 bottles; California, New York, and Tennessee

Need to know:
Released by Beverly Spirits, this blend of 60% bourbon and 40% rye was distilled at Cedar Ridge Distillery in Iowa.

Whisky Advocate says:
Beverly Spirits’ first expression, Beverly High Rye, was released last year. It, like this release, is produced at Cedar Ridge.

COLLECTIBLE

Midleton Very Rare Forêt de Tronçais
Style: Blend
Origin: Ireland
Age: Not Stated
ABV: 48%
Price: $5,000
Release: October 2023
Availability: Limited annual release

Need to know:
A new annual bottling from Irish Distillers, this whiskey is a blend of single pot still and grain whiskeys distilled in the 1980s–2000s that have been matured in bourbon barrels and finished in new French oak casks from the Tronçais forest.

Whisky Advocate says:
Cooperages seek out mature Tronçais oaks from the forests in the center of France, as the wood is renowned for making some of the world’s finest barrels used in the cognac, wine, and spirit industries. Kevin O’Gorman began looking for the perfect cask for this release in 2017 when he was Midleton’s master of maturation, a journey that led him to select a T5 cask from the Taransaud cooperage in France. The fine-grained staves are left to season in the open air for five years, adding layers of delicate and subtle flavors to the older Midleton whiskeys. Bookending the project, O’Gorman was subsequently appointed Midleton master distiller in 2020, becoming responsible for monitoring this whiskey throughout its three-year finishing period until it was ready for bottling. Typically, distillers either use Tronçais oak casks when they are new, filling spirit into it as a virgin French oak cask, or for finishing, such as filling it with mature stock for a cognac cask finish: this release is a virgin French oak finish, but last year, Glenlivet, a fellow Pernod Ricard brand to Midleton, released 21 year old and 25 year old single malt scotches that included time in Tronçais oak cognac casks in the recipe.