Cask of Scotch whiskey breaks world record by selling £16 million

An Asian collector recently paid 16 million British pounds (nearly 19 million euros) for a barrel of Scotch whiskey, which is a new world record, reports the British newspaper “Financial Times”.

The barrel “Cask No. 3” dates from 1975 and comes from the distillery Ardbeg, located on the Scottish island of Islay. It is part of Glenmorangie, which in turn belongs to the French luxury goods group LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy). Ardbeg will take around 88 bottles of whiskey a year from the cask for the next five years and deliver them to the buyer. This equates to £36,000 per bottle.

Whiskey is making a comeback and cask sales are booming. The previous record was set in April, around £1m for a 1988 Macallan cask, but this has now been smashed. According to the newspaper, this astronomical amount can be explained by the fact that it also includes all kinds of costs for the following years, such as storage, bottling, labeling, insurance, etc. Usually a barrel is bottled in one go, precisely because it is easier and cheaper.

Author and whiskey expert, Charles MacLeandescribed the £16m barrel as “a remarkable piece of history”, adding: “The factors that make a particular whiskey investable are three: rarity, taste and variety. And collectors love whiskey because of the provenance and history».

THE Bill Lumsdenhead of distilling and whiskey creation at Ardbeg, said: “I’ve really only tasted such a whiskey two or three times in my career. It has an emotional, comforting quality that I find hard to put into words.».

He also said that the number of 1970s casks left in the distillery’s warehouses can be counted on the fingers of one hand, adding that most whiskeys from that era went into blends, meaning single malts are rare.

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