A cask of uncommon Scotch whisky has bought for £16mn to a non-public collector in Asia, smashing the earlier world document of £1mn which was set only some months in the past.
The single malt, which dates to November 1975, was produced on the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery, on the Scottish island of Islay, west of Glasgow.
The £16mn cask, often called Cask No 3, bought for greater than double the worth that Ardbeg’s proprietor Glenmorangie Co, a subsidiary of LVMH luxurious group, paid for the distillery and all of its inventory in 1997.
Some 88 bottles, priced at about £36,000 every, will probably be drawn from the cask every year for the following 5 years and delivered to the Asian whisky fanatic.
The sale represents a brand new high-water mark for the more and more aggressive market in uncommon whisky.
Last 12 months, a document 172,500 bottles of single-malt Scotch have been traded on the secondary market at a worth of £75mn, up from practically £58mn a 12 months earlier, in accordance with estimates by the Rare Whisky 101 Index.
The earlier document for the costliest whisky cask was held by one distilled in 1988 on the Macallan property within the Scottish Highlands, which was bought to an American collector for £1mn in April.
In 2019, nonetheless, a 60-year-old bottle of very uncommon 1926 Macallan single malt from the identical distillery fetched practically £1.5mn.
Thomas Moradpour, president and chief govt of the Glenmorangie Co, mentioned the £16mn cask was a “source of pride” for the Ardbeg group on Islay, which had watched because the distillery got here again from “the brink of extinction” to turn out to be “one of the most sought-after whiskies in the world”.
The Ardbeg distillery, which started industrial manufacturing in 1815, was mothballed all through many of the Eighties and virtually closed completely in 1996 earlier than being purchased by Glenmorangie Co. Consequently, few Ardbeg whiskies have been left that had been distilled earlier than 1981. The £16mn cask is the oldest whisky ever launched by the distillery.
Charles MacLean, Scotland’s main whisky author and professional, referred to as the cask “a remarkable piece of liquid history”.
“The factors which make a particular whisky investable are threefold: rarity, flavour and variety,” mentioned Maclean. “And collectors do love Scotch, because of the provenance and history.” In 2021, the BC20 Whisky Cask Index, which tracks the values of assorted Scotch whiskies, grew 14 per cent.
“I’ve really only tasted a whisky like this two or three times in my career,” mentioned Bill Lumsden, head of distilling and whisky creation at Ardbeg. “It has an emotional, comforting quality to it I find hard to put into words.”
The price ticket contains the hidden prices of storage, insurance coverage, bottling, labelling, distillery visits and taxes — prices which might be often added on high.
Lumsden added that Nineteen Seventies casks left within the distillery’s warehouses will be counted “on just a few hands”. The “vast majority” of whisky from that period was put into blends so single malts are uncommon, he defined.
Source: www.ft.com”