Some people like to chill their whiskey by putting it on some ice, but how about bringing some barrels to the coldest place on earth for a few years? Argentinian distillery La Alazana did just that, shipping a pair of single malts to Antarctica for the first time, and it will be available for purchase sometime next year.
La Alazana, founded in Patagonia in 2011, is Argentina’s first single malt distillery, making whiskey from locally grown barley, locally foraged peat, and water from the Andes Mountains. In 2022, the distillery chose two five-year-old virgin oak casks of whiskey to send to Antarctica for further maturation. The whiskey, called Isla Marambio, was first transferred to former Maker’s Mark bourbon barrels before being shipped to Argentina’s research station Base Marambio on Seymour Island, where it will spend an additional three years before being shipped back to Argentina for bottling.
The project was a collaboration with Cask World, a company focused on bottling whiskeys 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 whiskeys matured on all eight continents (including Zealandia, which represents New Zealand in this series). “By maturing whiskey in eight radically different environments, the Continental Series invites scientists and enthusiasts alike to study how climate affects maturation,” Cask World’s Daniel Monk said in a statement. It also includes “how polar pressure slows evaporation, how altitude increases oxidation, and how tropical warmth accelerates wood conversion. It’s not just about taste, it’s about understanding the land itself.”
According to the monk, the whiskey was stored in a priceless hut where it was subjected to the harsh Antarctic climate, with temperatures ranging between –535°C and 10°C. As whiskey aficionados already know, temperature and humidity are the driving factors that make whiskey interact with a barrel as it ages—when heated, the whiskey expands into the wood to absorb color and flavor. When it cools, the liquid contracts and drains out of the wood. So there may have been little interaction between wood and whiskey in this cold climate, but the La Alazana whiskey team believes it had a profound effect. “When I was distilling it, there was a very distinct floral note that isn’t usually that strong in our whiskeys,” Laila Sarinelli, co-founder and distiller of La Alazana, said in a statement. “Here’s something I think happened. I can’t vouch for it, but it’s a thought… even though there are temperature variations, the average temperature stays below zero. This allows for extraction and oxidation, but keeps the ethanol and reduces evaporation. We’ll have better insight when we measure the ABV of the vat whiskey.”
Samples of the whiskey are going to Scottish whiskey expert Charles MacLean for tasting, and samples from all eight single malts will be analyzed by scientists “to identify isotopic characteristics, mineralogy and other traits” that can be linked to the terroir of the whiskey’s maturation and the way it takes shape from one whiskey to the next. The bottles will be distributed between La Alazana and Cask World, and will be available for purchase sometime in 2026.
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