sir ernest shackleton

Shackleton's Whisky Unearthed For Testing Not Tasting

Filed under: Spirits

Last year I mentioned that a trove of spirits crates left by Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton under the floorboard of Shackleton's small wooden shack at Cape Royds in Antarctica had been unearthed. A crate of the Charles Mackinlay & Co. whisky has now been recovered and is being slowly thawed in New Zealand. Four crates were left in the ice and the one labeled Mackinlay's whisky is now at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island.

Handling 100-year-old whisky that has been subjected to such harsh conditions is no easy task. The crate has been carefully thawed in a controlled environment. Whyte & Mackay, the Scottish distillery that now owns the Mackinlay's brand, was behind the push to recover the whisky after it was discovered in 2006. It hopes to obtain for samples to test and potentially use to relaunch the defunct Scotch label. Although the whisky may be drinkable it will probably not be tasted. The museum has created a special website to keep the curious informed on the state of the project.

Tags: antarctica, charles mackinlay, shackleton, sir ernest shackleton, whisky, whyte and mackay

Unearthing Shackleton's Whisky

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Spirits

Old whisky can be found in some pretty amazing places. I've heard of it stashed in the walls of houses, buried under ground, and discovered in shipwrecks under the ocean. But the trove left by Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton might be the most unusual. Shackelton and his crew left two cases of Scotch whisky stashed under the floorboard of a small wooden shack at Cape Royds.

The whisky was discovered by conservators in January 2006. They were unable to get the crates out but will be trying again in January during the Antarctic summer. It's not known what shape the bottles of Charles Mackinlay & Co. whisky will be in after one hundred years of freeze and thaw. The crates and bottles will remain in Antarctica unless they need to be taken off the continent for conservation reasons.

Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte & Mackay, the company that now owns the Mackinlay label, would like to be able to taste the whisky. He has a 1907 letter from Shackleton along with a photograph of the bottles' label. He tells the Global Post he would like to extract some by sticking a needle through the cork and taking out liquid with a syringe. If the corks remained intact the whisky could taste much like it did in Shackleton's day but if the corks were dislodged and oxygen got in the taste may have been compromised. If a bottle were to make it out of Antarctica and onto the open market it could fetch over $1,000 a bottle not as much for the taste but for the provenance.

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Tags: antarctica, sir ernest shackleton, SirErnestShackleton, whisky