Coming Soon: Mackinlay's ML Scotch Whisky Bottled 1939
Exciting news today, as we’ve just confirmed an extraordinary crop of 1930s whisky for our February auction!
These beautiful bottles of Mackinlay’s ‘ML’ Liqueur 12-year-old Scotch Whisky are notable for their excellent condition and impeccable provenance. These bottles were inherited by the son of the original owner, and we have not only an original wooden crates with address labels, but also the Excise Certificate from historic London wine & spirits merchants Saccone & Speed dated 14th September 1939, the year the bottles were sold. For context, this was less than two weeks after Britain had entered WWII, and was the day the first German U-boat was sunk off the Hebrides after attacking HMS Ark Royal. Over in America, meanwhile, the VS-300, the first practical helicopter, was taking its first ever flight.
Even more remarkably, there are no fewer than 20 of these ancient bottles of Mackinlay’s ML 12-year-old coming up for grabs - a case of a dozen bottles wrapped in straw, and eight further individual bottle lots. The 12-year-old age statement and the 1939 Excise certificate mean that we can say with certainty that the whisky in these bottles must have been distilled no later than 1927. The whisky is labelled as 30 Under Proof, ie 70 UK Imperial Proof, which is equivalent to 40%.
The name of Charles Mackinlay will be familiar to some whisky fans of a certain age, as it has been associated with Scotch whisky since at least the early 1800s, when Chas. Mackinlay & Co. was founded in Leith, the blending epicentre of Edinburgh. After a successful period as agents for the Port Dundas grain whisky brand MacFarlane’s, Mackinlay & Co. became whisky blenders with The Original Mackinlay in 1847. A few decades later in 1892, with the company now led by the original Chas. Mackinlay’s grandson (also named Charles), Mackinlay & Co entered into business with John Birnie, manager of the Glen Albyn distillery, to build another distillery in Inverness: Glen Mhor.
The firm of Mackinlay & Birnie was to flourish well into the 20th century, taking over Glen Albyn in 1920 and riding the success of their proprietary blended Scotch and vatted and single malt whiskies. These brands included the likes of Ben Vorlich, Mackinlay’s VOB (Very Old Blended) and of course ‘ML’, which began life as Mackinlay’s Liqueur but later became known as Mackinlay’s Legacy after the use of Liqueur as a term to describe smooth, long-aged whisky became outdated.
Mackinlay's remained a family business for many generations, and even after selling the company to Scottish & Newcastle in 1961, Ian Mackinlay, the founder’s great-grandson, and his son Donald were still heavily involved with the blending of the Mackinlay’s whiskies. By the 1980s Mackinlay’s was just outside the top ten blended Scotch whiskies in the UK but the brand fell on hard times after being bought by Invergordon Distillers and then subsequently being absorbed into Whyte & Mackay after the latter purchased Invergordon in 1995.
By the turn of the millennium the Mackinlay's brand was dormant and seemed destined to vanish into obscurity along with so many of its peers. Fate was to intervene soon afterwards, however, when several cases of spirits were found under the abandoned Antarctic hut of legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton.
Shackleton famously had to abandon his South Pole trip in 1909, giving up less than 100 miles from his goal in order to save the lives of his men, with the trip later inspiring his memorable quote, ‘A live donkey is better than a dead lion’. A century later, three cases of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt were discovered encased in the Antarctic ice and in 2011 samples were obtained and flown back to Scotland on board a private jet belonging to the Indian fraudster and money launderer Vijay Mallya, who owned Whyte & Mackay at the time.
W&M’s publicity-friendly Master Blender Richard Paterson called the discovery of the Mackinlay’s Rare Old Malt ‘a gift from the heavens’ and quickly got to work, with his Mackinlay’s Discovery tribute blend hitting the shelves barely two months later in a limited edition of 50,000 bottles.
The original and recreated Shackleton bottles of Mackinlay’s were noticeably similar in style to our 1930s bottles of Mackinlay’s, with the ML emblem and Chas. Mackinlay font virtually identical to our Mackinlay’s ML 12-year-old bottles coming under the hammer on Wednesday. The success of the original Mackinlay’s Discovery blend led to a second tribute bottling from Whyte & Mackay called Mackinlay's Journey in 2013 to commemorate the launch of the Epic Expedition which sought to recreate Shackleton’s 800-mile trek from Elephant Island to Georgia.
In 2017, Whyte & Mackay finally launched Shackleton’s Whisky, a new blended malt paying tribute to the intrepid explorer. Shackleton’s has remained highly popular, and a close look at the label reveals the old Mackinlay’s blend being name-checked in the same classic font shared with both our fantastic Mackinlay’s ML 12-year-old bottles and the Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt found at Shackleton’s base camp twenty years ago after a century of slumber under the Antarctic ice.
Our Mackinlay’s ML 12-year-old bottles will be sold in nine separate lots, featuring eight individual bottles and a special lot of a dozen bottles complete with stencilled wooden packing crate with labels and Excise Certificate. It’s always a privilege to bring this kind of historic whisky to auction and we are delighted to have these magnificent old Mackinlay’s coming under the hammer. Keep an eye out in our auction starting on Wednesday 12th February at 8pm for your chance to bid on these marvellous old blends.