whiskey
Record broken as one of 40 bottles of Macallan’s oldest ever vintage is auctioned, described as a ‘rich dram’
Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:35 p.m. GMT
The record for the world’s most expensive bottle of whiskey was broken after a bottle of Macallan sold for £2.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1926.
The sale set a new record for every bottle of spirits or wine auctioned, the auction house told AFP.
The rare bottle was expected to fetch between £750,000 and £1.2 million, but surpassed estimates on Saturday, fetching £2,187,500.
One of the Macallan 1926 bottles set a record for the most expensive bottle ever sold in 2019 when it fetched £1.5 million at Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s whiskey boss Jonny Fowle told AFP he was allowed to taste the prized dram before it went on sale.
Fowle said: “I tried a tiny drop – a tiny drop – of it. It’s very rich, it has a lot of dried fruit in it, as you would expect, a lot of spice, a lot of wood.”
He added that it had been sitting in dark European oak for 60 years, which was reflected in the color. “It is not a whiskey to be taken lightly. It’s a rich dram, but it’s incredible,” Fowle said.
The Adami 1926 is the oldest Macallan vintage ever produced.
The bottles are among just 40 that Macallan, based in Moray in northern Scotland, has confirmed were bottled in 1986 from cask number 263.
However, these were not available for purchase, but were instead offered to Macallan’s top customers.
Every time an example appears at auction, records are broken: between 2018 and 2019, the record was broken three times by three of the different variations: Sir Peter Blake, Michael Dillon and Fine and Rare.
The record-breaking bottle is one of 12 Macallan 1926 bottles whose labels were designed by Italian painter Valerio Adami in 1993.
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