Macallan Harmony Phoenix Honey Orchid

The Macallan Harmony Collection × JING Tea "Vibrant Orchard" Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky — Tea-Inspired Limited Release, 80 Proof

Price

$189.95

✔ Authenticated by the house — seal, fill level, and label inspected before release
✔ Documented provenance on every bottle
✔ Climate-safe, collector-grade packaging

Age: NAS (Limited Edition) | Region: Speyside, Scotland | Proof: 88.4

Secure payments

Vault-to-door shipping

Adult signature (21+) at delivery

43.9%

ABV

Aug 2025

Released

Speyside

Region

£152 at release

SRP

Warm honey

Colour

Edrington

Brand owner

The Macallan Harmony Collection Inspired By Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea is the domestic half of Harmony V, bottled at 43.9% ABV and released 5 August 2025. Made with JING, the British single-garden tea curator, it takes its reference from an oolong grown in the Phoenix Mountain range of Guangdong. It is the one release in the collection where Macallan published its cask reasoning in full.

Nº 01

The Elemental Distinction

43.9% ABV. Released 5 August 2025 in domestic retail and online, at £152.

Three cask types, each with a stated job — the collection's only published cask-by-cask reasoning.

European oak selected deliberately for astringency, to mimic what tea does.

Made with JING, curators of single-garden teas since 2004.

Inspired by Phoenix Honey Orchid, an oolong from the Phoenix Mountains of Guangdong.

The first Harmony pairing where the travel-retail half is the stronger of the two.

Nº 02

Cask & Craft

Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea

JING sources single-garden teas directly from named producers, which is the parallel Macallan drew on for this collaboration — both businesses argue that provenance down to the individual plot or cask is what separates a good product from a generic one. Phoenix Honey Orchid is a Dancong oolong from the Phoenix Mountain range in Guangdong, prized for aromas closer to dessert wine than to what most drinkers expect from tea. Macallan's response was structural rather than imitative: three cask types, each doing a defined job, assembled to land near the tea's profile. The packaging follows the collection's premise by incorporating spent tea leaves from the collaboration itself, so as with the oak chippings of the previous edition the material comes from the subject rather than from an unrelated industry.

Nº 03

Cask & Packaging

What the release is built on

Casks

Predominantly sherry-seasoned American

Oak; sherry-seasoned European oak; a subtle inclusion of ex-bourbon American oak

Packaging

Incorporates spent tea leaves from the

Collaboration

JING, British curators of single-garden

Teas since 2004

Whisky Maker

The Macallan Whisky Mastery Team

Nº 04

Sensory Profile & Strategy

Distiller notes & position

Sensory Profile

Colour: Warm honey, stated by Macallan as natural with no colouring added.
Nose: Summery peach and apricot with the heady sweetness of floral honey, over tropical fruit, toffee and sweet oak.
Construction: Predominantly sherry-seasoned American oak, with sherry-seasoned European oak and a subtle inclusion of American oak casks that previously held bourbon.

Strategic Position

Every earlier release in this series asked you to take the flavour brief on trust. This one shows its working. Macallan set out what each cask type was there to do: sherry-seasoned American oak for the fruity and floral character, sherry-seasoned European oak for roasted richness and a touch of astringency, and a small proportion of ex-bourbon casks for a closing sweetness meant to echo the dessert-wine aromas in the tea itself. Astringency is the telling one — it is the quality that makes tea taste like tea, and it is not something a distillery usually advertises adding. It sits among the Macallan collaboration releases we carry, after the oak pairing that preceded it.

Nº 05

Collector Note & Index

Vault provenance

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Collector Note

Harmony V inverts a pattern that had held for four editions. In the cacao, arabica and meadow pairings the domestic bottle was always the stronger one — 44% against 40%, then 44.2% against 40.2%. The oak pairing levelled both at 44.2%. Here the travel-retail Cherrywood Lapsang comes in at 44.9% against this bottle's 43.9%, making it the first edition where the duty-free half is the higher-strength release. Anyone who has been buying the domestic bottles on the assumption they are the fuller expression should know the assumption has expired. Note also the naming: the full title is Inspired By Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea, and listings that shorten it risk confusion with Vibrant Oak from the previous edition — the words Orchid and Oak sit close enough that shortened names in this collection have already produced errors in the trade. The coffee pairing of 2022 is the closest comparison for a drink-alongside release.

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How to Taste It

Drink it beside the tea it was built from, not beside coffee. Phoenix Honey Orchid is a Dancong oolong with dessert-wine aromatics and exotic fruit, and the whisky was constructed to sit next to it rather than to replace it — the peach, apricot and floral honey are aimed squarely at that cup. Brew the oolong properly, short and hot, and take the whisky neat between infusions. No water in the glass: at 43.9% this is among the lower-strength releases in the collection, and the astringency the European oak contributes is the first thing dilution removes.

Collector IndexMW VAULT

Distillery: The Macallan, Craigellachie, Moray
Class: Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Collection: The Harmony Collection
Released: 5 August 2025, domestic retail and themacallan.com
ABV: 43.9%
Whisky Maker: The Macallan Whisky Mastery Team

Nº 06

Technical Specifications

Specification	Detail
Class	Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Collection	The Harmony Collection — Harmony V, domestic release
Released	5 August 2025, domestic retail and themacallan.com; The Macallan House Singapore from 11 August
ABV	43.9%
Casks	Predominantly sherry-seasoned American oak; sherry-seasoned European oak; a subtle inclusion of ex-bourbon American oak
Colour	Warm honey. No colouring added.
Collaboration	JING, British curators of single-garden teas since 2004
Inspiration	Phoenix Honey Orchid, a rare aromatic oolong from the Phoenix Mountain range, Guangdong, China
Whisky Maker	The Macallan Whisky Mastery Team
Packaging	Incorporates spent tea leaves from the collaboration
Travel-retail counterpart	Inspired By Organic Cherrywood Lapsang Tea, 44.9% ABV, global travel retail from 1 October 2025
Suggested retail	£152 at release
Region	Speyside
Distillery	The Macallan, Craigellachie, Moray
Brand owner	Edrington

Nº 07

Records & Assurance

Authentication & Vault Preservation

Every bottle sold through Midnight Whiskey is sourced as an authentic, sealed product and inspected before it ships. Orders are packed with padded, glass-rated handling and require an adult signature (21+) on delivery; we do not ship to anyone unable to verify legal drinking age. For our full sourcing and handling protocols, see our editorial and authentication standards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What ABV is Macallan Harmony Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea?

43.9% ABV. It was released on 5 August 2025 as the domestic half of Harmony V at £152. Its travel-retail counterpart, Inspired By Organic Cherrywood Lapsang Tea, is bottled higher at 44.9% and launched on 1 October 2025 — the first time in the collection that the duty-free release is the stronger of a pairing.

What casks were used for the Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea release?

Three types, each with a stated purpose. Predominantly sherry-seasoned American oak for fruity and floral character; sherry-seasoned European oak for roasted richness and a touch of astringency; and a subtle inclusion of American oak casks that previously held bourbon, for a closing sweetness intended to echo the dessert-wine aromas of the tea. It is the only Harmony release for which Macallan published its cask reasoning in that detail.

Who is JING and what did they contribute?

JING is a British tea company founded in 2004 that curates single-garden teas sourced directly from named producers. For Harmony V it supplied the two teas the whiskies were built around — Phoenix Honey Orchid, an oolong from the Phoenix Mountain range of Guangdong, and Organic Cherrywood Lapsang, a reinvented Lapsang Souchong smoked over cherrywood in the UK. Spent tea leaves from the collaboration were incorporated into the packaging.

Midnight Whiskey · The Vault Phoenix Honey Orchid Tea

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