For the last six years, Julie Macklowe has been turning heads with her American single malt that drinks more like a Highland classic than anything coming out of Kentucky. Now she’s coming for bourbon itself. Today The Macklowe brand dropped the Sapphire Bourbon Collection—two new Kentucky straights that look, taste, and cost like nothing else on most guys’ shelves.
The main release is a four-year-old straight bourbon that rings in at sixty-five bucks. Next to it sits an ultra-limited five-year version finished for twelve extra months in port-seasoned casks—only 240 bottles, blue label, one-forty a bottle, and you can only get it at Collezione New York. Then, just to remind everyone this isn’t their first rodeo, they’re dropping a one-time single cask 13-year-old monster. Two hundred bottles worldwide, fifteen hundred dollars each, and when it’s gone it’s gone for good.
What makes these different starts way before the juice ever sees a barrel. Most Kentucky bourbon uses the sour mash method—taking some of the spent mash from the last batch and tossing it into the new one to keep consistency and control acidity. The Macklowe goes the other way: sweet mash only. No backset, no shortcuts. That means the distillery has to be spotless and the fermentation has to be perfect every single time. Pull it off and you get a cleaner, brighter spirit right out of the still. A lot of big names say sweet mash is too risky for everyday production. Apparently nobody told Julie Macklowe.
Once the whiskey is in wood, the obsession gets dialed up another notch. They brought in Brendan McCarron—the same guy who ran the show at Glenmorangie and Bunnahabhain—to taste and track every single barrel. Not just once or twice, but through the whole aging process. Evaporation rates, acidity changes, ester development… nothing got past him. Julie says every cask had to hit exact marks for grain sweetness, tannin structure, and aromatic precision before it was even considered for the blend.
Pour the regular four-year and you get exactly what a Kentucky bourbon is supposed to give you on the nose—big caramel, vanilla bean, a little oak. Take a sip and it flips the script. There’s a bright citrus zip up front, then a long, textured finish loaded with dry tannins and a cool menthol note that feels straight out of Islay. Old bourbon drinkers will feel right at home; single malt guys will swear they’re drinking something from Scotland.
Step up to the port-finish five-year and things go richer. Overripe berries, dark plum, satin-smooth mouthfeel that coats the tongue without ever getting heavy or syrupy. It’s still unmistakably bourbon, but it drinks with the kind of layered complexity you normally pay north of two hundred bucks for in the scotch aisle.
Both bottles come in at an easy-sipping 46% ABV and wear the same heavy, flask-shaped glass the brand has used since day one. The four-year rocks a red label with a bright blue rim running around the bottle. The port finish flips it—blue label, same blue edge. If you already own the original Macklowe single malt, the gold-rimmed bottle will sit right next to these two and look like family.
Julie Macklowe doesn’t hide the fact that the blue was deliberate. “It’s confidence, clarity, and timeless beauty,” she says. Walk into a room full of brown liquids in brown bottles and that blue edge stands out like a Rolex on a work site. She wants the bottle to look like modern sculpture on the bar cart—something you’re proud to pour for company and just as proud to leave out when nobody’s around.
And about that one-off 13-year single cask… picture everything the four-year does, then crank the spice and depth to eleven. At thirteen years it’s got layers of baking spice, old leather, and dark chocolate that only come with serious time in the rickhouse. Two hundred lucky buyers get to find out exactly what a sweet-mash, hand-selected, obsessively blended old bourbon can do.
Six years ago The Macklowe showed the whiskey world that America could play—and beat—the single malt game. Now they’re bringing that same no-compromise attitude to bourbon. Sixty-five dollars for the four-year is steal territory when you taste what’s in the glass. One-forty for the port finish feels fair when only 240 people on the planet will ever own one. And fifteen hundred for the 13-year? That’s the price of admission to something that flat-out won’t exist next year.
If your bar has room for one new bourbon this year, a lot of guys are about to find out The Macklowe just rewrote what “luxury Kentucky straight” is allowed to be.
