The recently launched Zenith Captain Winsor Annual Calendar Boutique Edition is a collaboration with Musée International d’Horlogerie (MIH), with whom Zenith has previously collaborated on a similar watch with a different dial. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to briefly see and handle this new piece.

So what does this collaboration involve? It means that what is inside the new Annual Calendar is based on Zenith’s automatic El Primero Calibre 4054 column-wheel chronograph movement, with the annual calendar module designed by Ludwig Oeschlin.

The calendar part of the movement has nine parts with three concentric discs to operate the automatic adjustment following months with 31 days to ones with 30 days. A single adjustment of the calendar is obviously required at the end of February. The name of an annual calendar derives from the fact that the month has to be manually adjusted only once a year, hence ‘annual’.

This new boutique edition features Arabic numerals, day and month windows at 3 o’clock, a date window at 6 o’clock, and a small seconds sub dial at 9 o’clock. As well as a centre chronograph (blued) hand there is also a 60-minute counter at 6 o’clock.

The model comes in two metals – rose gold with a matte white dial, or steel with a grey ‘smoked’ palladium dial. For the first of these iterations, each sub-dial is ringed in rose gold, as is the calendar window. The applied Arabic numerals for the rose gold model are gold-plated, and rhodium-plated for the stainless steel model.

The new Captain Winsor Annual Calendar is 42mm in size, with a thickness of 13.85mm. Its front and case back are anti-reflective sapphire crystal and the watch comes on a brown alligator leather strap with either stainless steel or rose gold triple-folding clasp.

Quite apart from the use of the El Primero movement, aesthetically speaking, both versions of this new model are nicely-sized and elegant dress watches. In terms of the dial design, whether you prefer the use of Arabic numerals rather than the hour markers of yore will be very much a case of personal preference, but if I have one small query, it would be about whether the ‘Annual Calendar’ text below ‘Zenith’ is necessary – it is not in the regular production Captain Winsor Annual Calendar models.

Although as a dial colour I prefer the sombre elegance of the colour graduation in the silvery grey steel model, as a ‘total watch’ I found the rose gold version the more striking when I saw them together. It just seemed that little bit more dressy.

The rose gold version has an RRP of CHF 20,200 and the steel one, a RRP of CHF 9,400. To those who don’t know, a definite ‘thumbs up’ credit to Zenith for their website, which includes prices for their models.

Categories: Switzerland, Watch Profile, watches, Zenith