MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Crate of Shackleton’s Antarctic-hut whiskey shows liquor did not freeze

The Antarctic explorer and 'Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky'

A crate of Scotch whiskey that once belonged to famous polar explorer Ernest Shackleton was opened Friday, several months after having been rescued from a 100-plus old prison of Antarctic ice.

The crate, which contained 11 bottles of 'Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky', was discovered along with four others in Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island in 2006. The famed traveller brought the liquor with him during his 1907 Nimrod expedition and the cases were ultimately discovered encased in ice under the floor boards of the hut.

The liquor inside, however, had not frozen, despite temperatures of -22 Fahrenheit.

The Scotch, which was defrosted at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island, will eventually be returned to Shackleton's hut and preserved “for its historic significance”.

However, samples will be sent to Whyte and Mackay, the distiller who took over Mackinlay's operations, so that they can attempt to duplicate the brew. “The original recipe for the Scotch no longer exists”. The discovered bottles were probably distilled in 1896/97.

The whiskey was first discovered, along with a couple of crates of brandy, back in 2006 by a team that included Al Fastier of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust. However, it could not be extracted until January of this year because it was too deeply encased in ice.

“To our amazement we found five crates, three labelled as containing whiskey and two labelled as containing brandy,” Fastier told French government news agency AFP earlier this year. Also included along with the Mackinlay's Scotch were crates of brandy labelled Chas McKinlay & Co and The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited Allandale.

Whyte and Mackay master blender Richard Paterson previously called it “a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers… If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history.”

Ten of the bottles were reportedly perfectly intact, save for the labels, according to an August 13 press release from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust.

“It's been a delicate and slow process but we are delighted to be able to confirm that the crate contains intact bottles of whisky,” Lizzie Meek, the Antarctic Heritage Trust Artefacts Manager at the Heritage Trust, said in the press release.