A 104-year-old hangover has accidentally frozen out Dundee’s role in an early Antarctic expedition by Ernest Shackleton.
Whisky company Whyte & Mackay revealed this week it had made an exact replica of a bottle of whisky that had been frozen underneath a hut used by the explorer on his 1907 Antarctic expedition.
Master blender Richard Paterson spent two months blending malts to perfect the Mackinlay’s whisky after the three bottles which were found in the Antarctic a year ago were thawed and tested.
The label on the neck of the bottle states the bottles came from the ship Endurance in 1907, even though Shackleton’s ship on the voyage was a converted Dundee whaler called Nimrod.
In fact the ship Endurance that Shackleton would eventually take to the South Pole in 1914 was not built until 1912.
However, although it looks like an error has been preserved in amber, there is no mistake and the discrepancy is purely down to the explorer’s own indecisiveness.
When the whisky was bottled Shackleton intended to rename Nimrod as Endurance but changed his mind before setting sail, so all the whisky bore the name of a ship that did not then exist.
Shackleton later described the Dundee vessel as “one of the finest I have known” and confided in a letter that Nimrod was a far stronger ship than Endurance.
Whyte & Mackay, which owns the Mackinlay’s brand, has created 50,000 bottles of the 47.3% replica whisky, which will be sold at £100 each.
Five per cent of every sale will go to the Antarctic Heritage Trust, the New Zealand charity that uncovered the original whisky, which is said to have a light flavour and vibrant colour.
The three bottles of whisky discovered in the Antarctic last year are so rare that the trust and New Zealand authorities refused to let them travel unaccompanied or in the hold of a plane.
Whyte & Mackay owner Vijay Mallya collected the bottles personally in January and flew them to Scotland in his private jet.