Some people like to cool down their whiskey by pouring it over some ice, but how about bringing a couple of barrels to the coldest place on Earth for a few years? Argentinean distillery La Alazana did just that, sending a pair of casks containing single malt to Antarctica for the very first time, and it will be available to purchase at some point next year.
La Alazana, which was founded in Patagonia in 2011, is Argentina‘s first single malt distillery, making whisky from locally grown barley, locally sourced peat, and water from the Andes Mountains. In 2022, the distillery selected two five-year-old virgin oak casks of whisky to send to Antarctica for further maturation. The whisky, which is called Isla Marambio, was first transferred into ex-Maker’s Mark bourbon barrels before being shipped to the Argentine research station Base Marambio on Seymour Island, where it would spend an additional three years before being shipped back to Argentina for bottling.
This project was a collaboration with Cask World, a company that is focused on bottling whiskies from New World distilleries as opposed to traditional countries like Scotland and Ireland. Isla Marambio will be released as part of Cask World’s Continent Series, which will feature whisky matured on all eight continents (including Zealandia which is represented by New Zealand in this series). “By maturing whisky in eight radically different environments, the Continent Series invites scientists and enthusiasts alike to study how climate impacts maturation,” said Cask World Daniel Monk in a statement. That includes “how polar pressure slows evaporation, how altitude amplifies oxidation, and how tropical warmth intensifies wood exchange. This isn’t just about flavor, it’s about understanding the Earth itself.”
According to Monk, the whisky was stored in an uninsulated hut where it was subjected to the harsh Antarctic weather, with temperatures ranging between –35°C and 10°C. As whisky fans already know, temperature and humidity are the driving factors that make whisky interact with a barrel as it ages—when it’s hot, the whisky expands into the wood to soak up color and flavor; when it’s cold, the liquid contracts and moves out of the wood. So presumably there was pretty minimal interaction between wood and whisky in this cold climate, but the La Alazana whisky team believes it had a profound effect. “When I was decanting it, there was a very special floral note that is not so strong in our whisky usually,” said Lila Serenelli, co-founder and distiller at La Alazana, in a statement. “There’s something that I think has happened. I can’t assure it, but it’s a thought… although there are temperature variations, the mid temperatures tend to be under zero. This movement allows extraction and oxidation, but holds the ethanol in and reduces evaporation. We’ll have better insight when we measure the ABV of the vatted whisky.”
Samples of the whisky are going to Scottish whisky expert Charles MacLean to taste, and samples of all eight single malts will be analyzed by scientists “to identify isotopic qualities, minerals and other traits to identify location to spirit connecting the terroir of a whiskies maturation and how it shapes a whisky,” according to Cask World, “the world’s first scientific paper on whisky terroir across all continents of Earth.” The bottles will be split between La Alazana and Cask World, and will be available to purchase sometime in 2026.
Authors
-
Jonah Flicker