Sotheby's London will auction single malt whiskey on November 18th. Photo: Kin Chung/AP
A rare bottle of Scotch, dubbed the 'Holy Grail' for whiskey lovers, will sell for £1.2 million when it goes up for auction next month.
Sotheby's will auction a 96-year-old bottle of Macallan single malt whiskey in London on November 18, with pre-bidding beginning at the beginning of the month.
The 1926 Macallan Adami is expected to sell for at least £750,000, but Sotheby's has set the item's guide price to £1.2 million.
If it reaches this level, the bottle will become one of the most expensive ever sold.
The record for the highest spend on wine or spirits is held by another bottle of The Macallan 1926, which sold in 2019 for £1.5 million.
Before this, the record was set. Macallan Whiskey 1926 is called the “Holy Grail” and “the most sought-after Scotch whiskey.”
The Speyside distillery produced just 40 bottles of the whiskey, aged for six decades and bottled in 1986. The bottles were then offered to Macallan's leading clients.
The 96-year-old whiskey features a label created by Italian artist Valerio Adami. Photo: Kin Chung/AP
The bottle, which will go on sale next month, is the first to go through the restoration process, which involved replacing the cork and applying glue to the corner of the bottle's label. The label was designed by Italian artist Valerio Adami.
Sir Peter Blake, who co-designed the cover for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band also designed some of the labels used on the bottles. One of the labels was hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon.
Macallan said these designs are part of the reason for the high price, although the distiller insists that “the liquid inside the 60-year-old is exceptional and rare in itself.»
According to Sotheby's, one of the bottles with Mr. Adami's label was destroyed during the earthquake in Japan in 2011.
Only one It is known that it was opened and drunk, and the photographs were taken from the scene in Japan.
This means that there is not enough information about the taste of the whiskey. However, Macallan says the whiskey is woody and resinous, «sweetened with medium treacle toffee and rich dried fruit.» Johnny Fowle, global head of spirits at Sotheby's, said: «Macallan 1926 — the only whiskey that every auctioneer wants to sell, and every collector wants to own.”
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