A rare bottle of whisky has smashed records by selling for £2.1m ($2.7m) at auction. The Macallan 1926 single malt is one of the most highly coveted bottles of Scotch whisky in the world. Sotheby’s sold the bottle for more than double its estimated price in London on Saturday, with the auction house’s head of whisky, Jonny Fowle, describing it as “very rich” with “a lot of dried fruit, spice and wood.”
The whisky spent six decades maturing in dark oak sherry casks before bottling in 1986. Just 40 bottles were produced, reportedly not available for purchase and given to The Macallan’s top clients. As a result, whenever the bottles have gone up for auction, they have commanded enormous sums. A similar bottle was sold in 2019 for £1.5m.
Speaking last month, prior to the auction, Fowle called The Macallan 1926 “the one whisky that every auctioneer wants to sell and every collector wants to own”. Sotheby’s said the 40 bottles released from the 1926 cask were labelled in varying ways, with two having no labels at all. A maximum of 14 were decorated with Fine and Rare labels, 12 were labelled by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, and the remaining 12 were designed by Italian painter Valerio Adami.
It is unknown how many of the 12 bottles of The Macallan Adami 1926 remain. One reportedly was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake in Japan, and at least one other has been opened and consumed. The sale beats the previous record for the most expensive wine or spirit sold at auction
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