Elka Brings Their Amber Whiskey-Themed Dial To The Arinis Dive Watch
By Vuk Radic for It' s about Time
This year in Geneva, I spent a lot of time in the iglu outside of Vila Sarasin, the mobile studio in which the fantastic The Real Time Show was recorded by my friends Alon Ben Joseph and Rob Nudds. I hung out there for two reasons. One was because that was the best place to meet all the watchmakers you would want to meet. And the other is that they had a few bottles of TRTS branded Loch Lat whiskey. It was quite the tasty sip, which came as a surprise since the whiskey was made in Saint-Blaise, Switzerland. Not the first place you think of when you think of whiskey. The drink was launched last year as a set with a truly stunning S series Elka watch, a limited series of 25 pieces with an amber colored dial. Why the pairing between Loch Lat and Elka? Well, they’re owned by the same person, Hakim El Kadiri. Now, Kadiri is bringing back the beautiful amber dial, only now it’s set into Elka’s Arinis dive watch.
The fairly new Arinis is a major departure for Elka, who has so far made great flieger and a dress watches, and much more appropriate for a diver. The stainless steel case measures 41mm wide, 11.85mm thick, with a 46.50mm lug-to-lug. On top is a 120-click unidirectional bezel with a black ceramic insert with beige Old Radium Super-LumiNova markings. The bezel surrounds a very vintage-looking chevé box sapphire crystal. The crown screws down and you get 200 meters of water resistance.
The dial takes on the color of whiskey, a deep amber in the centre that gets darker towards the edges. It’s one of the prettiest dial colors I have ever seen. The indices are sticks at the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions, dots for the rest and there’s a triangle at 12 o’clock, all filled with Old Radium Super-LumiNova, accented by a white outline. The hour hand is a stylized leaf shape, while the minute is an arrow hand, which might be a bit confusing as they are similar in length and usually the hour hand is rendered as an arrow. Both are filled with lume.
Inside is the automatic La Joux-Perret calibre G100 which beats at 28,800vph and, despite being an alternative to the ETA 2824 and the Sellita SW200, it has a much more impressive power reserve than the competitors of 68 hours. There a selection of straps you can chose - seven-link grain of rice or Milanese mesh stainless steel bracelets, black tropic rubber or black nylon NATO.
The Elka Arinis x Loch Lat is available now, priced between CHF 1,755 and CHF 1,845, depending on the strap option. See more on the Elka website.