Folio 7 is the seventh instalment in The Macallan's ongoing Archival Series, a line built around the distillery's own advertising and design history. Each volume is presented in a hardback-book case containing the bottle alongside reproductions of the campaigns, photographs and press work drawn from The Macallan's archive at the Easter Elchies estate on Speyside. The series began in 2015 and has become one of the distillery's most anticipated annual releases among collectors.
The liquid is a sherry-cask single malt in the house idiom, matured in first-fill sherry-seasoned European and American oak. The Macallan's guiding argument — that the cask is the dominant factor in the character of a sherried single malt — runs through the whole Folio line, and Folio 7 sits comfortably within that tradition.
On the nose it is classically Macallan: dried fruit, honey, orange oil and a clean wash of sweet oak. The palate is sherry-soaked and layered, with raisin, chocolate and cinnamon giving way to soft wood spice. The finish is medium-long, warming rather than heavy, with dried fruit holding on into the glass.
Like its predecessors, Folio 7 sold out almost immediately through The Macallan's own channels and has since traded at a premium on the secondary market. The design work inside the case is a genuine reward for those who choose to open rather than shelve it.
