Slainte! Woman connoisseur pays £16m for single barrel of whisky
A COLLECTOR has paid a record £16 million for a cask of whisky – the equivalent of £2,100 a dram.
The sum for the single malt smashed the previous £1 million record for a barrel set in April.
Cask No3 dates from 1975 and comes from the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery on Islay.
The female Asian whisky enthusiast who bought it has asked to stay anonymous. The cask’s contents will be bottled and it is thought she will drink it with friends, family and gift it to business partners rather than sell it.
The sum paid is more than twice the figure Ardbeg’s owner, the Glenmorangie Company, paid in
‘We are proud of what it represents in the journey’
1997 for the entire distillery and stock. The cask, a 500-litre oloroso sherry butt, is twice the size of a standard barrel and contains enough whisky for 440 bottles.
The price paid is the equivalent of £36,000 a bottle and £1,440 a finger (30ml).
The cask will remain with the distillery, with the whisky continuing to age, and bottles – 88 at a time – will be supplied to the new owner over the next five years.
By the time bottling is complete, the owner will have Ardbegs ranging from 47 to 51 years old.
One taster described the malt as ‘gently smoky’, with hints of ‘aromatic woods, balsamic notes and dried fruits’ and with a ‘long, nutty finish’. The £16 million deal includes all costs such as storage, insurance, bottling, labelling, distillery visits and taxes.
Established in 1815, Ardbeg found fame in the 19th and early 20th Centuries principally for producing malt for blending.
It closed in 1981 following a downturn in the whisky industry in the 1970s and 80s, and was mothballed for almost a decade before being revived by the Glenmorangie Company in a 1997 takeover.
Since then, the distillery has gone from strength to strength, with the industry enjoying unprecedented worldwide appeal. An international Ardbeg fan club has 120,000 members. Some of them camp out to sample new whiskies when they are released – and even get Ardbeg tattoos.
The record cask is a rare example of an Ardbeg distilled prior to the 1981 closure and Cask No3, 48 per cent alcohol by volume, is the oldest ever bottled.
Ardbeg head of whisky Bill Lumsden said: ‘The majority of Ardbeg in those days went into blends and it is almost impossible to find Ardbeg from this era bottled as a single malt.’
Thomas Moradpour, president and CEO of the Glenmorangie Company, has pledged to give £1 million from the sale to charitable initiatives linked to Islay. He said: ‘We are proud of what it represents in the journey of Ardbeg.
‘Think that 25 years ago it was a dying distillery. A quarter of a century later it’s one of the world’s most sought-after whiskies.’