Kilchoman Machir Bay Collaborative Vattings – An Overview

At the end of 2018, Kilchoman launched the ‘Machir Bay Collaborative Vatting Programme’, which aimed to give local retailers the opportunity to create personalised bottlings of the distillery´s flagship expression Machir Bay.

Deviating from the normal cask composition of Machir Bay, which is 90% bourbon and 10% Oloroso sherry, retailers could choose one of four different variants with slightly altered proportions for the Collaborative Vattings: 95% bourbon / 5% sherry, 92.5% bourbon / 7.5% sherry, 87.5% bourbon / 12.5% sherry or 85% bourbon / 15% sherry cask-matured whisky. As with the “normal” Machir Bay bottlings, the alcohol content was 46% abv. The boxes and bottles in the usual Machir Bay design were labelled with an individual sticker from the retailer. The minimum order quantity was 120 bottles.

In promoting the new range, Kilchoman founder and master distiller Anthony Wills emphasised that even small changes in the ratio of bourbon and sherry cask maturation can have a major impact on the character of a whisky:

“The Collaborative Vatting Programme is a great opportunity for us to work with our customers to create a bespoke version of Machir Bay tailored to their personal preferences.
Small adjustments in the proportions of Bourbon and Sherry maturation can have a profound effect on a whisky’s character so it will be interesting to see how people alter the percentages.”
Anthony Wills, Kilchoman Founder and Managing Director.

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The series enjoyed varying degrees of success in the dozen or so countries where it was offered. This depended, of course, to a large extent on the respective national importers. Similar to the Small Batch Bottlings for Selected Markets, the US importer ImpEx Beverages was particularly active in advertising and distribution. Approximately half of all Machir Bay Collaborative Vattings released worldwide were sold to retailers in the US! The other half of the bottlings were released primarily in Kilchoman’s main European markets, apart from a few editions for South Africa and Taiwan. In countries with a state alcohol distribution monopoly, such as Norway, Sweden and the Canadian provinces, the retailer-focused series was not released at all.

Looking at the bottlings released in terms of the frequency of the bourbon/sherry cask proportions chosen, it can be said that the variants with the greatest differences (upwards and downwards) from the standard 90 / 10 Machir Bay bottling were most popular, with the bottlings with 90% bourbon / 15% sherry clearly in the lead.

The series was discontinued at the end of 2023. However, Kilchoman subsequently allowed national importers to distribute similar individualised bottlings in specific cases under the names Machir Bay Private Vatting and Sanaig Private Vatting.

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List of bottlings:

95 % Bourbon, 5 % Sherry

92,5 % Bourbon, 7,5 % Sherry

87,5 % Bourbon, 12,5 % Sherry

85 % Bourbon, 15 % Sherry

Bourbon to sherry ratio not specified

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