BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
For 2021 Montblanc refreshes a line it originally introduced two years ago. The Heritage Manufacture Perpetual Calendar Limited Edition 100 is a unique watch in Montblanc’s quite unusual collection, in that it sits somewhere near the top of Montblanc’s watch hierarchy, but it doesn’t have a movement made by Minerva, the historic movement maker the brand acquired a few years ago.
The new watch for 2021 features a burnt caramel coloured dial with a grainé (grained) finish and circular guilloché for the subdials. Brown can be a difficult colour to get right on dials, and it’s highly subjective to the light environment it’s in. In the press renders you see before you, it looks good, although how it will do in real life is anyone’s guess. Montblanc has made the sensible decision to pair it with a red gold case that measures 40mm x 12.25mm.
Inside the case is the automatically-wound calibre MB 29.22. It features a 4Hz beat rate, a 48-hour power reserve and is made of 378 components, 259 are dedicated solely to the intelligent perpetual calendar system. Montblanc has developed an entirely new perpetual calendar system in-house that does away with levers and instead relies exclusively on cams and wheels. It’s a little difficult to describe in layman’s terms, but you can think of it as similar to a planetary gear array based around a central wheel. It can slow down the progression of the time to the correct speed for each indication of the perpetual calendar (date, day, month, moonphase and leap year and a 24-hour display as well).
Because it doesn’t use any levers, you’re able to safely set the calendar forwards or backwards as needed, useful if it’s part of a large rotation of watches. Montblanc has also fitted a safety system preventing you from altering the calendar 6 PM and 12 PM when the system builds up to move the perpetual calendar system forwards to the next day.
Montblanc is offering this watch for €24,900.
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