Whiskey Friday: A Little Macallan I Picked Up on a Whim

Call it an impulse purchase, like the Kit Kats near the register at the grocery store. How could I resist a 64 year old Macallan in a lovely decanter? Sure it was expensive, but when was I going to get another shot at it, another chance for this experience of a lifetime. In order to give you, my readers, a view into this exclusive experience, I now shed the anonymity with which I purchased this lovely elixir, and give you my review:


Macallan Cire Perdue, 64 yo, 42.5% abv ($460,000)

The nose smells like crystal and ambrosia, manna from heaven, the sound of one hand clapping and the flutter of the wings of a butterfly. The palate reverberates with harmony and contentedness, triumph and exhilaration...If you are drinking this you have arrived, you have triumphed, but mid-palate there emerges a pang of remorse, the melancholy of a life gone by, the misty, foggy morning in which you realize that your innocence no longer beckons you from afar. The finish is tinged with regret at the lack of second chances, regrets that in a moment of great bravado, you bought a very precious bottle of whisky and now you live in a cardboard box under the freeway with three pillows, an old blanket and an empty, albeit lovely hand-blown crystal decanter that luckily holds more than a liter which is very useful given the paucity of public restrooms in Los Angeles.

Cire Perdue is a taste memory you will not soon forget.