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A singular expression of the Macallan ‘The Reach,’ an 81-year-old ranking as the world’s oldest whisky, struck an epic hammer priceof $270,487 at Sotheby’s, London in an exclusive single lot auction on October 5th.
The UK collector whose identity remains anonymous made the winning bid. And with the hammerfall made history with the oldest whisky ever purchased at public auction.
It was consigned directly from the distillery, with profits readied to benefit the Macallan Artisan Apprentice Fund according to WhiskyAdvocate.
The previous record owner for the oldest whisky sold at auction was the world’s very first 80-year-old whisky, Gordon & MacPhail’s Generations 80 years of age distilled at Glenlivet.
Matured one year less than The Reach with just 250 bottles released, its decanter No. 1 was auctioned by Sotheby’s, Hong Kong on October 7, 2021, attaining a hammer rate of $154,158. The profits of both sales raised money for charitable reasons.
So what difference did a year make? Well, $116,330 evidently; that’s the difference in the hammer price between the first 80-year-old whisky and the first ever 81-years-old whisky. Yet why?
First, the Macallan is the world’s most collectible whisky and the first and only distillery to break a million bucks for a solitary bottle at auction. The discussion of both whiskies includes high-end style and also craftsmanship, yet the sculptural aspects of The Reach provide it a higher status as artwork over the Gordon & MacPhail bottling.
This sale took place at once when some whisky public auction homes were seeing a substantial surge in the variety of unsold bottles at their auctions, making the outcome all the more amazing. When the Gordon & MacPhail Generations 80-year-old was auctioned in October 2021, it was perhaps a more aggressive market. The day after the Glenlivet 80-years-old brought $154,158, Sotheby’s held a successful sale of the only set of the Dalmore Decades The No. 6 Collection for a hammer price of a bit below $900,000, as an example.
The Macallan ‘The Reach’ 81-year-old, 41.6% ABV, was released in February 2022 at a cost of $125,000 per container, having been nurtured for generations because of its distillation year of1940. Macallan released 288 bottles, each supported by 3 hands cast in bronze by sculptor Saskia Robinson in an instance crafted from the timber of an old elm that had fallen at the Macallan estate. The one-of-one edition bid at the public auction had a red natural leather lining for its case, while all the others were cream-colored.
This auction between insanely aged whiskies is far from over, as several of the most significant names in scotch attempt to preserve diminishing supplies of older draughts inside ancient barrels in order to bring forth ever-still older whiskies.
H/T WhiskyAdvocate, The Macallan
