‘Holy grail’ of whisky sells for record £1.5m

A single bottle of the “holy grail” of whisky has sold at auction for a record £1.5 million, Sotheby’s has said.

The bottle of The Macallan 60 Year Old 1926 had been estimated to sell for between £350,000 and £450,000 ahead of its auction in London yesterday.

It is part of a collection of Scotch whisky described as the most valuable to be offered at auction, and expected to sell for around £4m in total.

The Ultimate Whisky Collection, the auction house’s first offering of spirits from a single owner, comprises 394 lots, 467 bottles and nine casks.

The company claims it is the most comprehensive collection of Scotch whisky to come to the market from a private seller, a wine collector who turned to Scotland’s national drink.

The man spent his youth in the UK but now lives in America and built his collection with the help of US-based whisky specialist Jonathan Read.

Whiskies from Bowmore, Highland Park and The Macallan distilleries became his focus, with Sotheby’s describing the original label 60-year-old The Macallan 1926 from cask number 263 as the holy grail of whisky. The cask produced only 40 bottles.

The previous auction record for a single bottle was £1.2m – for another bottle of The Macallan 60 Year Old 1926 drawn from the same cask but presented in a unique bottle painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon – at a London auction in November last year.

Online bidding on the collection opened on September 27, culminating in yesterday’s live auction at the Olympia in West Kensington, London, alongside RM Sotheby’s sale of collectable motor cars.

Sotheby’s Wine chairman Jamie Ritchie said: “It is an honour to launch spirits as a new category for Sotheby’s Wine and to present the world’s largest and most important single-owner spirits sale.”

Picture: Sotheby’s/PA.