Londoners are very difficult to impress, especially in December. The city has seen enough glitter to last for several centuries, and anything calling itself a “holiday installation” usually gets a polite nod before quickly dissolving into the urban blur.
Still—walk into The Ned’s Grand Banking Hall this week and you’ll feel that tiny, involuntary hitch in your breath. The kind that betrays you before you’ve had a chance to put your cool face back on.
The culprit stands twenty-two feet tall. A Christmas tree, technically, even though it behaves more like a visiting dignitary who understands the power of a well-timed entrance.
It’s the first-ever collaboration between The Ned and The Macallan, and you can tell somebody somewhere decided subtlety wasn’t the hill they wanted to climb on.
This fabulous tree is wrapped in The Macallan’s signature shade of red, with velvet bows that look soft enough to bruise against. Deep, warm, almost wine-dark in the late afternoon light that drifts through the Banking Hall like a slow-moving spotlight.
Copper ornaments spark through the branches in quick, disciplined flashes. They’re meant to echo the distillery’s copper stills, but they also give off the faint impression of coins tossed into a fountain for luck, which seems appropriate in a building that once handled fortunes with a straight face.
Grandirosa helped create the design, though “create” feels too detached for what they’ve done here.
The branches are dotted with small, woodland gestures: berries, acorns, a scatter of foliage that looks like it came off a Speyside hillside moments before someone boxed it up for London. Then there are the white ornaments, stamped with The Macallan’s “M,” tucked in just deep enough that noticing them feels like being let in on something.
The tree would be dramatic anywhere, but in The Ned’s fabulous Grand Hall it becomes inevitable.
The place has a way of amplifying whatever you see there. Maybe it’s the Lutyens architecture, the marble that remembers every footstep, the columns that look like they’ve overheard too many confessions to be surprised by anything. Or maybe it’s the ghost of the old Midland Bank, still lurking in the corners with a faint smell of fountain pen ink and old paper.
Since its reinvention in 2017, the building has softened without losing its authority, turning into a kind of social engine with ten restaurants, a members’ club, and a revolving cast of visitors who always seem slightly more interesting than average.
It makes sense, then, that The Macallan expanded the scene beyond the tree. The Library Bar has become a kind of whisky chapel for the season, temporarily allowing non-members to taste from the distillery’s upper stratosphere.
The M Decanter. Art is the Flower. The Harmony Collection. Bottles that usually require hushed tones or a discreet invitation suddenly sit there, available, almost nonchalant, like movie stars pretending they don’t notice the cameras.
Lutyens Grill has joined in, too, offering four Macallan cocktails that read like winter postcards. Timeless Mastery uses Double Cask 12 Years Old and spiced orange to announce itself with a bright, almost optimistic lift.
Honeyed Hearth brings the 15-year expression into a softer, more domestic mood—you can practically hear a fireplace crack somewhere in the background. Sherried Star leans into the 18-year whisky with chocolate and amontillado, a combination that seems engineered for people who don’t usually linger over menus but suddenly do.
And The 1824, anchored by Sherry Oak 25 Years Old just sits there with the calm self-assurance of someone who’s seen enough of the world to speak only when necessary.
The collaboration between The Ned and The Macallan runs through December 27. Long enough for you to step inside on a grey afternoon and forget, for a moment, that most holiday trees are just trees. But this one is a lot more than that; a reminder that the season still has a flair for surprise when the right people conspire.
