The Macallan Archival Series

The Archival Series revisits The Macallan’s own advertising archive. The campaign began in The Times on 27 March 1980, on the back page beside the crossword — small black-and-white advertisements in precise, witty prose, created by David Holmes and the copywriter Nick Salaman of the London agency Holmes Knight Ritchie. It ran into the early 1990s and took the distillery’s name to a wider audience for the first time.

The folios take that story a part at a time: the origin of the name, a place called Macallan, the snow lingering on Ben Rinnes, a strathspey the fiddler James Scott Skinner was moved to write by his favourite malt, the luggy bonnet, the Chairman dancing the Highland fling, the boffins left baffled, the Colossus of Nose.

The Macallan describes it as a 24 part series. Eight folios have been released so far. The Macallan does not publish outturns for the series.