A rare bottle of 1926 Macallan Adami single-malt whisky sold for $2.7 million at Sotheby’s auction in London on Saturday, as per a report in CNN. The auction house claims that the Macallan 1926 is the oldest Macallan vintage ever produced, with only 40 bottles retrieved after 60 years in sherry casks.
The bottle of Scotch, dubbed “the most sought-after” whiskey in the world by experts, includes one-of-a-kind labels made by Italian painter Valerio Adami.
Reconditioned bottle set a new record
Sotheby’s reports that the bottle sold on Saturday was the first to be reconditioned by Macallan’s distillery. This entailed replacing the bottle’s cork and capsule, as well as putting new glue on the corners of the labels. “The Macallan 1926 is the one whiskey that every auctioneer wants to sell and every collector wants to own,” said Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s head of spirits. He added that the sale of the bottle was “nothing short of momentous for the whisky industry as a whole.”
“After being aged in sherry casks for six decades, just 40 bottles of The Macallan 1926 were bottled in 1986, representing the oldest Macallan vintage ever produced. The 40 bottles were reportedly not made available for purchase; instead, some were offered to The Macallan’s top clients. The appearance of any of these bottles at auction over the years has resulted in extraordinary results – across 2018 and 2019, the auction record was broken three times by three of the different variations (Sir Peter Blake, Michael Dillon, Fine & Rare),” the auction house said in the description.
Mr. Fowle told AFP that he had tried a small sample and it was “very rich”. “I tasted a tiny drop – a tiny drop – of this. It’s very rich, it’s got a lot of dried fruit as you would expect, a lot of spice, and a lot of wood,” he said. He further called it an “incredible whisky that should not be taken lightly”.
The last high point was set in 2019, after a Macallan 1926 sold for $1.8 million.