A Bottle Of Scotch Whisky Just Sold For $1.1 Million
An extremely rare bottle of Scotch whisky, described as the “Holy Grail of Whisky,” sold for a record $1.1 million at auction, Yahoo News is reporting.
So precious is the 1926 Macallan Valerio Adami that it sat in a wooden barrel aging for 60 years. It was distilled during the Coolidge administration and then given six decades to mature before being bottled in the Clinton administration. Also making that particular bottle attractive to collectors is the artwork it bears. When the vintage was bottled, Macallan commissioned two artists, Valerio Adami and Peter Blake, to design the labels. Each artist contributed a dozen labels, meaning that only 24 bottles of this particular whisky were produced.
It is unclear how many such bottles remain in circulation.
For these reasons, collectors were salivating over getting their hands on that bottle. And when it went up for auction, it didn’t disappoint. Once the final gavel was banged, the bidding had ended at £848,000 ($1.1 million), shattering the previous world record.
Unfortunately for those curious about what this million-dollar whisky tastes like, it’s likely that the whisky will never be opened and consumed. These days, such rare bottles of whisky are more like investments than they are things to be enjoyed. A recent study by European banking firm Credit Suisse revealed that it’s not uncommon for wealthy investors to put their money in rare books, rare instruments, rare wines and whiskies, and so on.
How much?! "The holy grail of whisky", which dates back almost a century, has been sold for world record sum of £848,750 https://t.co/yF0PNzFzKP
— Sky News (@SkyNews) October 3, 2018
Collectively (no pun intended), such “unusual” investments actually perform better than more traditional investments such as stocks and bonds. By Credit Suisse’s accounting, Europe’s ultra-wealthy have about 6 percent of their combined investments in collectibles.
But let’s suppose that the buyer, whose name has not been revealed, actually plans to crack open the whisky and serve it at his next party. According to The Spruce Eats, a 750ml bottle of whisky (standard size) yields 16 shots. That means that a single shot of this vintage would set you back $68,750. A single milliliter (basically a few drops) would cost you $1,466.
By comparison, the highest auction price ever paid for a bottle of wine, according to Vine Pair, was $304,375, for a six-liter bottle of 1947 Château Cheval Blanc. However, that was a six-liter bottle, and wine is typically sold in 750ml bottles. So while the 1947 vintage would set you back $7,609, that price doesn’t compare to the big winner in the wine world. That honor goes to a bottle of 1907 Heidsieck champagne, salvaged from a shipwreck. The bottle sold for $275,000, for a per-glass price of $55,000.
