The £1million bottle of whisky
Rare Macallan sells for world-record price
AT £43,000 a shot, it’s not a dram we’ll all be drinking.
But this bottle of Macallan is a world record holder after selling for £1.2milllion yesterday.
It is the first time a bottle has broken the million-pound barrier.
The 60-year-old, 42.8 per cent ABV Macallan 1926, presented in a hand-painted design by Irish artist Michael Dillon, was sold at Christie’s in London.
It features The Macallan’s historic home, Easter Elchies House in Moray.
The whisky came in a 70cl bottle, meaning that a 25ml dram would cost £42,857.
Tim Triptree, Christie’s international director of wine, said: ‘We are absolutely delighted – £1.2million is quite a price. It was an amazing atmosphere, with bidding in the room and on the phone.
‘Two bidders were involved from the start, just going for it. We opened at £700,000 and went to £1million. As the bidding went up and up it was electric, culminating in a round of applause.
‘It is a unique and beautiful bottle – the finest and most collectable single malt produced in the 20th century.
‘I would like to think someone will open it. Whisky is produced to be drunk and enjoyed – although it’s fair to say that each wee dram of this particular whisky is going to work out to be pretty expensive.’
He added that, after spending 60 years in cask, the whisky would be dark in colour – ‘amber, a bit of mahogany in there’.
He said that, should it be opened, the taste would be ‘incredibly complex’, adding: ‘The flavours are going to be so concentrated, it’s going to have so many aromas, that each time you get to the glass I’m sure you would be smelling and tasting something different.’
The previous world record for a bottle of whisky was set only last month when another Macallan 1926 60-year-old, featuring a label designed by Italian pop artist Valerio Adami, made £848,750 at Bonhams in Edinburgh.
The Speyside distillery asked Adami and Peter Blake, the artist responsible for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album cover, to design labels for the 1926 Macallan – and 12 individually numbered bottles from each artist were released after the whisky had spent 60 years maturing in sherry casks before bottling in 1986.
Less well-known was that one bottle was commissioned from Dillon. Unseen for nearly 20 years, the bottle had been described as ‘the most collectable single malt produced in the 20th century’ – as yesterday’s sale price proved.
‘Most collectable single malt’