According to auction house Sotheby’s, a bottle of the world’s most expensive whiskey sold for more than two million pounds in London on Saturday, breaking a previous record set in 2019.
This 75cl bottle of Macallan 1926 sold for £2,187,500 (€2.5 million), setting a new auction record for a bottle of wine and spirits, according to Sotheby’s.
Distilled in 1926, this Scottish whiskey was bottled 60 years later after maturing in oak barrels, which gave it its dark color. This is Macallan’s oldest vintage.
AFP
The bottle sold Saturday could be the last in a series of 12 that bear a label designed in 1993 by Italian painter Valerio Adami. One of these 12 bottles was apparently destroyed in an earthquake in Japan.
Sotheby’s had published an estimate of between £750,000 and £1.2 million for the bottle, whose cork and capsule were replaced by the distillery this year.
This whiskey (42.8°) comes from Macallan cask number 263, of which only 40 bottles were produced.
One of them, 70cl, sold for almost £1.5 million in 2019, beating the previous record set by a bottle from the same cask the previous year.
“It’s the same liquid” but with “a different label,” explained Jonny Foyle, whiskey manager at Sotheby’s, at the unveiling of the bottle of Macallan Adami last month.
The specialist was able to enjoy a “very small drop” of this “incredible” whiskey: “It is very rich”, with lots of aromas of “dried fruit”, “spice” and “wood”.
One milliliter of whiskey was taken from the bottle sold on Saturday to conduct tests and compare it with another bottle of the 1926 vintage. It now serves as a benchmark for further comparisons in the future.
Originally posted 2023-11-18 18:36:26.