I'll show my ignorance by asking a question. I just picked up a bottle
750ml US market of "Macallan Cask Strength" (NAS, 58.5%). (NAS is No Age Stated). There is also no bottling date that I can recognize on the bottle. It will be a very recent bottling, I'm sure, because a case of it suddenly showed up at my local SMS headquarters on the display rack. On the bottom of the bottle is a centered number 27 (underlined). Around the bottom of the bottle are the numbers L1 and 2273.
Does anyone know if the numbers mean anything, and is there a way to reliably tell when the stuff was corked? I'm not so concerned about this bottle because I know it's new, but for snooping around in old liquor stores, such information could come in handy. I've never seen any articles or discussion on the topic, which may be unique to each distillery or bottler.