Whiskey fan bids €36k for rare malt

BIDS for a single bottle of rare Irish whiskey stood at €36,000 on a whiskey auction website yesterday.

The recommended retail price for a bottle of Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Collection Chapter One is €35,000. Bidding for this bottle began at €10,000 last Friday at 5pm and had climbed to €36,000 within an hour.

Anthony Sheehy, co-founder of Irish Whiskey Auctions, said he expects bids for the bottle to surpass €40,000 by the end of online bidding next Sunday.

This rare whiskey was described as being part of Ireland’s oldest ever whiskey collection. It is a 45-yearold peated Irish single malt which was distilled in 1974, a year before the closure of the old distillery in Midleton, Co Cork.

The whiskey matured for almost half a century in a third-fill sherry cask reputed to give it “notes of ripe honeydew melon, red berries and sweet spices of toasted oak”.

The word ‘silent’ in the title of the whiskey refers to the old distillery having closed its doors with no further production for the last 45 years.

When the quantity of whiskey was laid down in 1974 by master distiller emeritus Max Crockett, it was part of a series of innovative trials never to be released or repeated.

Limited to just 48 bottles, it is being promoted as the ultimate collector’s item for investors and wealthy whiskey lovers.

The first bottles went on sale last month for €35,000 and it was stated that some of those sold were already fetching higher prices. The limited sale of the bottles is being staggered over the next six years until 2025, the distillery’s 200th anniversary.