Barrel load of money
Single malt whisky cask sells for record-breaking £16million
A businesswoman has paid £16million for a cask of Scots whisky, making it the most expensive tipple in the world.
The 500-litre barrel of 1975 Ardbeg single malt was sold by the Islay distillery to the wealthy Asian collector.
Known as Cask No. 3, it will stay at Ardbeg and 88 bottles will be sent to the mystery buyer every year for the next five years.
The staggering sale makes a 25ml dram of the spirit worth £ 1212 and a single bottle valued at more than £ 36,000.
By 2027, the owner will have hundreds of bottles ranging from 46 to 50 years old.
The sale has broken the £1million record for a single cask – set just months ago – and is more than double what the distillery and its stocks were bought for in 1997.
It is also the oldest cask the distillery has ever released.
The Sunday Mail previously told how the price of whisky was set to skyrocket due to supply chain woes caused by the pandemic and Brexit.
Bil l Lumsden, head of distillation and whisky creation at Ardbeg, said he had “only tasted a whisky like this two or three times” in his career. He said: “There’s an emotional, soothing quality to it that’s hard for me to put into words.”
Lumsden added that the casks from the 1970s left at the Islay site could be “counted on just a few hands” as most of the whiskies from that period were blended, leaving few single malt barrels.
Glenmorangie chief executive Thomas Moradpour said he was unsure about publicising the sale at first but decided it was a “source of pride” for the distillery and the wider community, with £1million from the sale being given to charitable initiatives on Islay.
Moradpour said: “Think that 25 years ago Ardbeg was a dying distillery – it was silent for most of the 1980s – and a quarter of a century later it’s one of the most sought-after whiskies in the world.
“It’s a source of pride for every member of the Ardbeg community.”