The £7k sham dram... world’s dearest whisky is revealed to be a fake
‘Rare 1878 Macallan single malt’ was created in 1970s
IT had sat unopened on the bar of an exclusive Swiss hotel for 25 years before a Chinese millionaire agreed to pay an eye-watering £7,700 for a single dram.
But as soon as the cork was removed from the bottle labelled as a rare 1878 Macallan single malt, suspicions were raised about the most expensive measure of Scotch ever poured.
Analysts from Scotland were called in by the Waldhaus Am See hotel in St Moritz after whisky industry experts spotted discrepancies in the bottle’s cork and label from newspaper articles.
Sadly, for the hotel’s manager Sandro Bernasconi and his customer, Zhang Wei, the tests proved the bottle was a fake, created in the early 1970s. Worse, the contents were not even a single malt but a lesser blend of malt and coarser grain whisky.
Mr Zhang, who has made a fortune writing martial arts fantasy novels under the pen name Tang Jia San Shao, bought the dram in July while on holiday in Europe with his grandmother. He paid just under 10,000 Swiss francs (£7,600) for the single shot while visiting the hotel’s Devil’s Place whisky bar, which stocks 2,500 whiskies.
Days later, he posted a message on Chinese micro-blogging platform Weibo, saying: ‘To answer you all, it had a good taste. It’s not just the taste, but also history.’
However, doubts soon emerged about the spirit’s provenance, prompting the hotel to send a sample to Dunfermline specialists Rare Whisky 101 (RW101) for analysis.
Carbon dating tests were then carried out by researchers from the University of Oxford which suggested a 95 per cent probability that the spirit was created between 1970 and 1972. Further lab tests by Fife alcohol analysts Tatlock and Thomson indicated it was probably a blend of 60 per cent malt and 40 per cent grain whiskies.
RW101 said the tests had shown the bottle was ‘almost worthless as a collector’s item’. Had the bottle been genuine, it would have carried a bar value of about £227,000.
The hotel said it had accepted the findings and reimbursed Beijing-based Mr Zhang, 36, in full.
Mr Bernasconi told BBC Scotland that the hotel had no idea the bottle was a fake. He said: ‘My father bought the bottle of Macallan 25 years ago, when he was manager of this hotel, and it had not been opened. When Mr Zhang asked if he could try some, we told him it wasn’t for sale.
‘When he said he really wanted to try it, I called my father who told me we could wait another 20 years for a customer like that so we should sell it. Mr Zhang and I then opened the bottle together and drank some of it.’
Mr Bernasconi broke the bad news to Mr Zhang when he flew out to China to reimburse him recently. He said: ‘When I showed him the results, he was not angry – he thanked me very much for the hotel’s honesty.’
RW101 co-founder David Robertson said: ‘The Waldhaus team did exactly the right thing by trying to authenticate this whisky.
‘We would implore that others in the market do what they can to identify any rogue bottles. The more intelligence we can provide, the greater the chance we have to defeat the fakers and fraudsters who seek to dupe the unsuspecting rare whisky consumer.’
The label on the dark-coloured glass bottle said the whisky was distilled in 1878 and matured for 27 years.
But experts said the glass used for the bottle was similar to ones made in 2002.
‘It’s not just the taste, but also history’