By Hamish Clark
The oldest whisky in the world is finally giving up some of its secrets, but there is still one mystery that remains.
The crate from Antarctica belonging to explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton has spent the last month defrosting at the Canterbury Museum, watched closely by museum curators and an extremely interested whisky buff.
Today a bottle of Mackinlays Rare Old Malt, a century old and remarkably well-preserved, was revealed.
“It’s exceptionally exciting and just about as rare as you can get,” says whisky connoisseur Michael Fraser Milne.
“I think we should crack open a bottle, because there is a lot of them.”
The case of whisky was discovered under Sir Ernest’s hut in Antarctica.
It has sat there, encased in ice, since his expedition in 1907.
Conservators have cleaned and dried the protective straw and removed them from the crate – only to find 11 bottles and one empty wrapper.
“It is very curious because it was right at the back of the crate,” says Artefact Programme Manager Lizzie Meek.
“It’s not a modern extraction, obviously it was taken out a long time ago.”
Did they take the bottle out when they were supposed to, or did someone sneakily take one out and then put the wrapper back in behind it?
That mystery may never be solved, but at least whisky buffs will one day get to answer the big question; how does it taste?
The plan is to syringe a few drops from one of the bottles so the famous explorer’s tipple can be recreated back in Scotland.
After a sample is taken and the conservation work is done, the bottles will be put back in the crate exactly as they were found and returned to Shackleton’s hut in Antarctica.
Images of the whisky bottles and video of the conservators at work can be seen in the project blog set up here
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