New Twist for Scotch on the Rocks

When Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on his 1909 expedition to Antarctica in search of the South Pole, he did what many a British explorer would do.  He took along a couple of crates of scotch whisky.  Shackleton's Happy Hour libations weren't drunk as planned and those two crates of scotch remain where he left them - under the floorboards of a hut his Nimrod Expedition called home.

In the hundred years since Shackleton stowed his whisky, McKinlay and Company, distillers of Shackleton's whisky, has gone belly up and that super-chilled cache of scotch has become firmly and, for the most part, permanently embedded in the Antarctic ice.  But all may not be lost after all.

McKinlay and Company was purchased by Whyte & Mackay, who no longer produce scotch under the McKinlay brand.  But they'd like to revive it.  And they'd like to make it just the way it was when Sir Ernest carted it off to the South Pole.  They've commissioned their own expedition to Antarctica with the expectation of drilling through the ice to retrieve a couple of bottles of the 100-year-old scotch.  From there, Whyte & Mackay's master blender will be given the task of recreating it exactly as it was originally made. The distiller hopes that putting this new twist on Shackleton's ancient scotch will draw enough interest to re-launch the now-defunct McKinlay brand.

Explorers representing the Antarctic Heritage Trust, headquartered in New Zealand, will strike off in January to retrieve a couple of bottles of this scotch permanently embedded on the rocks.  Most of the buried cache will remain behind, however, as artifacts protected under Antarctic Heritage conservation guidelines.  The trust is the result of a 12-nation treaty devoted to preserving Antarctic history.