Moon Import was founded by Pepi Mongiardino in 1980. Heeding the advice of the late, great, Silvano Samaroli, he opted to be "free from the big companies," and became the official distributor for Islay's Bruichladdich, and later Tamnavulin and Tullibardine, preferring however to procure casks from private owners. Mongiardino bottled his first whisky in 1982, titled the Half Moon series. Always beautifully labelled, Pepi is acclaimed for designing the packaging for Moon Import bottles himself, using images found in old books. The famous Birds, Animals, Costumes and Sea series were all labelled using pictures he discovered in an 18th century German encyclopaedia. These iconic designs, coupled with the quality of the liquid saw Moon Import steadily grow in popularity, and with the help of Intertrade founder, Nadi Fiori, they exported their first bottles to Japan in 2001.

This Macallan was distilled in 1970 and matured in butt #11306. Bottled in 1988 as part of The Sea series.

1988 was Moon Import's most prolific year to date, with the Costumes series also released that year, totalling over 7000 bottles.

Colour: pure gold. Nose: more discreet but not too far from some old official 18yo’s. Starts on hints of perfumed talc, old roses and ham (a funny mixture isn’t it), cherry liqueur and apricot pie, all that being rather elegant and subtle, certainly not wham-bam. Hints of wet stones and metal (aluminium pan, coins), fresh herbs (chives) and dead leaves, with the sherry making a very late arrival (hints of sultanas and meat bouillon and then bigger notes of dill, wild carrots and fennel). Macallan is unrecognizable here, by me at least, but the whole is very elegant whisky. Mouth: smooth and spicy at the same time, just as rich as the OB but much more on ripe apricots, yellow plums and all sorts of spices (nutmeg, hints of coriander, Chinese anise), getting then excellently herbal (mint, parsley, sage), with an oak that gets maybe just a tad too big after a moment. Slight old bottle effect (faint mouldiness in fact). Finish: rather long, on apricots and tannins, very slightly drying cinnamon). Another excellent one, certainly better than other bottlings in the ‘Sea’ series.

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