By 3 News online staff
It may be the most well-travelled whisky in history.
Three bottles of rare scotch taken by the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica more than a century ago are about to be returned to their original resting place, after a round trip to Scotland.
After being sent home from Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition in 1903, reportedly due to illness, Ernest Shackleton decided to launch the British Antarctic Expedition – a private venture unrelated to the military or the government.
He ordered 25 cases – 300 bottles – of MacKinlay's Whisky, an odd thing to do for a man who didn't really drink, and had in fact picketed against alcohol consumption in his youth. The whisky was intended to keep his men happy on the expedition.
Many of the cases were stashed under his hut at Cape Royds. They weren't found until 2007.
"The Antarctic Heritage Trust has spent millions of dollars doing up these huts," 3 News reporter Sam Hayes said on Firstline this morning.
"It's an incredible project they're undertaking – they've now almost finished at Shackleton's hut, this will be the last piece of the puzzle.
"In 2007 they started chipping away at this huge amount of ice that had formed underneath the hut. They created a bit of a dam to stop more ice being created, and now after a long summer season's work, they found these crates at the back. They said 'MacKinlay's Whisky' on the side, and lo and behold there was a faint smell of whisky as well, and so of course everyone got pretty excited and thought well if this is in fact the case, there might be bottles of whisky in there, and if there is whisky in them, it would be the whisky find of the century."
The three remaining bottles were sent to Christchurch for defrosting, then flown to Scotland.
"Then they were literally handcuffed to somebody from [current MacKinlay owners] Whyte and Mackay," says Ms Hayes.
"They managed to very carefully extract some and make a replica which we've been able to taste here at Scott Base, and surprise surprise, it wasn't a peaty type of whisky like they expected from that long ago – it was beautiful."
The original whisky is now being returned to its resting place at Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds.
3 News
source: newshub archive
