The release is a collaboration with American ceramicist Peter Pincus.
The Highland distillery known for its pioneering approach to cask maturation has unveiled its oldest whisky to date: a 50-year-old single malt limited to just 149 bottles, each presented in a bespoke porcelain vessel created by American ceramicist Peter Pincus.
Priced at €30,000 per bottle, Glenmorangie 50 Years Old marks the culmination of five decades of maturation and a three-year artistic collaboration between the Highland distillery and Pincus, whose work explores colour theory, form and technical experimentation.
The collaboration has also resulted in a tessellated porcelain installation, Together in Spirit, comprising 149 individually decorated vessels. Each is unique, yet designed to connect with its neighbours, forming a larger wall of art when assembled. Pincus and his partner Laurie developed 50 special colour pigments for the project, with each vessel painstakingly cast, sanded and hand-painted.
As for the whisky itself: that extends back to an earlier chapter in Glenmorangie’s history. Its origins lie partly in some of the last batches of barley malted at the distillery’s own floor maltings, which were decommissioned in 1977. The resulting spirit was distilled in Glenmorangie’s distinctive tall copper stills before being matured in bourbon hogshead casks and first-fill Oloroso sherry butts during the mid-1970s.
In 1999, a small parcel was transferred into a single hogshead for an extended period of maturation. Over the following 25 years, the whisky developed greater depth while retaining the distillery’s characteristic elegance, alongside more pronounced sherry influence.
The resulting dram is dark mahogany in colour, with aromas of baked orange, sultana, nutmeg and herbal notes, followed by flavours of toffee, stewed Assam tea, birch tar, cinnamon, clove and oak tannin. The finish brings notes of aniseed, treacle toffee and eucalyptus. It is non-chill filtered and bottled at 45.7 per cent ABV cask strength.
For Dr Bill Lumsden, Glenmorangie’s Director of Whisky Creation, the release represents a significant milestone. The whisky maker described it as one of his proudest creations, pointing to its combination of bourbon- and sherry-matured spirit and its origins in some of the final barley batches malted on site in the 1970s.
For Pincus, meanwhile, the challenge was to translate the character of the whisky into ceramic form. The resulting vessels were developed using techniques he says had not previously been used in ceramics, with the individual pieces intended to retain their own identities while forming a collective composition.
Glenmorangie 50 Years Old is available from September through the Moët Hennessy Private Client Team and the Glenmorangie Distillery Visitor Centre in Tain, with private enquiries also accepted through the brand’s website.
