Brothers,
I’d write to call attention to a small distillery located in a couple of hours north of Stockholm Sweden. I realize that Stockholm is not in Scotland, and so you may question the significance of my posting to our blog. But, I think what this distillery has attempted is worthy of your attention as it may create some exciting opportunities for Scotch whisky, too.

Mackmyra Distillery
Mackmyra started distilling in 1999, and they claim to be the most northerly distillery in the world. The distillery is the only whisky distillery in Sweden, and they draw their materials from the raw materials in Sweden creating a unique whisky offering.

The distillery determined that they wanted to provide the consumer a choice of how they would like to enjoy the single malt whisky from Mackmyra. Mackmyra essentially came up with two recipes—one called Elegant, the other called Smoke, and the spirit is to be aged in a choice of 3 different barrels (ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, or new Swedish oak barrels) producing six different varieties. To produce Smoke, the distillery uses juniper brush for spice on a bog-moss peat while Elegant is their original recipe born to be balanced and to pull it’s flavors more from the cask.

What really makes Mackmyra unique in the whisky industry right now is that they require you to buy an entire cask, and you can manage when the cask actually gets bottled. Yearly, the distillery will provide the owner of the cask with tasting samples, and once the whisky reaches 3 years in age, the owner of the cask can choose to bottle or let the spirt age longer.

These casks are much smaller than a normal cask (perhaps a quarter-cask like Laphroaig uses?) and because of the smaller cask, the whisky will mature more quickly because of the greater contact the spirit has with the wood cask. Mackmyra will also allow you to bottle partial casks and leave the remainder for one more bottling, but the trick is that each bottling must be for at least 12 bottles. Interestingly, shipping of the bottles was ‘on arrangement at time of bottling’, and no more details provided (beware–perhaps a headache to ship to the US?). The bottles will carry personalized labels, too.

The cost of a personal cask ranges from $1,263 (Elegant bourbon) to $3,575 (Smoke Swedish Oak). No small investment, and I don’t believe that includes shipping.

Reading about Mackmyra is intriguing, but I’m skeptical considering personal experiences that some of us have had with the Macallan scheme. Yet, the difference here is that this form of whisky marketing is being driven by the distillery itself, and therefore may be better managed.

I think one drawback though is that Mackmyra will never be able to establish a consistent taste profile. Think Macallan 12, think Laphroaig 10…you know what you’re getting. Mackmyra, the personal whisky, will never have a recognized taste profile, and that could be detrimental to the longevity of the brand. That seems to be ok with the distillery as they personalize all labels.

Please check it out for yourself at www.mackmyra.com