Watch the release dates and watch the listings. This went out worldwide in October 2022 but the United States allocation did not land until November, so US bottles carry a different arrival than the global launch date most descriptions quote — worth knowing when a seller dates a bottle by the release rather than by its market. More importantly, retailer pages for this collection are unusually error-prone: one US merchant currently lists a bottle titled as the 2024 Amber Meadow while the entire description beneath it is the Intense Arabica copy, Ethiopian beans and all. The releases share a house style, a box format and a naming convention, which makes them easy to confuse and easy to mislabel. Buy on the full expression name and the ABV together. The chocolate release that preceded it started the sequence.

Macallan built this one to be drunk with coffee and published a pairing ritual for it, which is unusual enough to be worth taking seriously rather than treating as marketing. The logic holds: a whisky carrying espresso and dark chocolate alongside an actual cup gives you the comparison the brief was written against, and at 44% there is enough body to stand next to something bitter and hot without disappearing. If you would rather taste it alone, take it neat and give the nose time — the tiramisu and cappuccino notes arrive before the oak does. Skip water. Four points of strength is the only thing separating this from its travel-retail twin, and diluting closes that gap for no gain.