This year at the Concours of Elegance Hampton Court Palace, I had the rare and exciting opportunity to get an up close, hands on look at the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Minute Repeater in Honeygold and it was beyond all expectation.

Lets start with the case material, Honeygold, this is a special gold alloy used by A. Lange & Söhne, it is not only harder than regular 18ct yellow or pink gold, but also more scratch-resistant. You might be thinking that a gold case for a Minute repeater would effect the volume and the tone of the minute repeater chime, but in this case it has relatively little impact. The tone and sound of the chime with the case material now in Honeygold is very similar to the previous Zeitwerk Minute Repeater where the case was made of Platinum, however the Honeygold has a slightly warmer tone. They both sound relatively the same, as the densities of Honeygold and Platinum are quite similar.

Everyone I have spoken to about A. Lange & Söhne have always mentioned Honeygold, and until getting hands on with a watch made of the alloy, I didn’t really understand the ‘hype’ around it. Until you see it in person. It is quite difficult to explain how it looks and feels, but the real charm of Honeygold comes from the fact that it changes from a rich gold colour in some lighting, to a warm ish pink gold in others (which you may be able to notice in some of these images, especially in the image above, where it is more of a rose/pink gold).

Now for some technical specifications. The Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is 44.2mm in diameter and 14.1mm thick. Yes, this is a very large watch, but once you understand the level of complexity needed for the movement to be able to essentially read the time out as sound, the size makes a lot of sense. Not only is this a minute repeater, but a decimal minute repeater, which means rather than the usual 15 minute increments (read out by the second set of chimes) it is a much more logical and intuitive increment of 10, meaning that the time is read out exactly how it is displayed on the Zeitwerk’s digital display. For example, in the image above, the time set to 7:52, the first lower pitched gong would strike seven times (for 7 o’clock), followed by both the lower pitched and higher pitched gongs striking five times (for 50 minutes), and then finally the higher pitched gong striking two times (marking 2 minutes). This is a much easier way of figuring out the time when used practically. If the time switches to the following minute/hour whilst the minute repeater sequence is ongoing, the Zeitwerk cleverly waits until the minute repeating has finished and then switches the minute/hour disk accordingly to catch up to what the sub seconds is displaying.

The finishing. I could not talk about an A. Lange & Söhne without talking about the finishing. The Zeitwerk is one of Lange’s most complex and iconic pieces with it’s large digital display, sub-seconds, power reserve indicator, and in the case of the Zeitwerk minute repeater, the two large gongs displayed perfectly, filling the space between the sub-seconds and the digital display. The movement features an incredible amount of different and extremely well executed finishing techniques which include: ribbing, solarisation, perlage, straight, circular, and circumferential graining, flat and black polishing, chamfering, a hand engraved balance cock and escape wheel bridge. Not to mention all of the even finer work like blueing the screws and setting the gold chatons. There really is no one else who does finishing quite like A. Lange & Söhne.

In terms of movement specification, the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater has a total of 36 hours of power reserve which is displayed on the large central power reserve indicator. Since the Zeitwerk minute repeater does not have a traditional lever for starting the minute repeater sequence, and instead comes with a push button on the side of the case, the number of times the function can be activated on a fully wound mainspring is limited to around 13 times. This can vary depending on the length of the minute repeater sequence as some hours of the day take longer and require more strikes than others. If it were to be set to the time 12:59, which would require the most number of strikes and therefore the most energy from the mainspring, it would be able to run 13 times, so in reality it is more likely that it will be able to run 14 to 15 times. The watch also come with some saftey measures in order to stop you from destroying your over half a million pound minute repeater, such as a red line on the power reserve indicator to prevent the use of the minute repeater function whilst there is insufficient power, the crown is also blocked so that when the minute repeater sequence is active it stops the user from being able to set the time and or wind the watch. Like most A. Lange & Söhne watches, this is water-resistant to as much as 3 bars which means it can withstand splashes and other factors when considering daily wear, though this does slightly affect the volume and sound of the repeater, it is well worth the trade off in order to negate the risk of water getting inside of your minute repeater.

From my brief time wearing and holding the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk minute repeater, it is a true grail piece. Although it wears what most people would consider too large, especially on my small wrists, I would happily enjoy just looking at it as the worlds most expensive desk clock, but if you could pull it off and you have wrists large enough, it would certainly be the most amazing looking watch when worn.