A rare bottle of whisky has sold for a world record price of £848,750 at an auction in Scotland.
The 1926 Macallan Valerio Adami bottle is the most expensive in the world and has been described as “the Holy Grail of whisky”.
Attracting attention from the world’s most serious collectors on Wednesday, the rare bottle fetched a hammer price of £700,000, plus a buyer’s premium of £148,750.
The whisky, which was created in 1926 and bottled in 1986, had expected to fetch between £700,000 and £900,000 at the auction at Bonhams in Edinburgh.
Martin Green, Bonhams whisky specialist in Edinburgh, said: “I am delighted at this exceptional result. It is a great honour to have established a new world record and particularly exciting to have done so here in Scotland, the home of whisky.
“The Macallan 1926 60-year-old has been described as the Holy Grail of whisky. Its exceptional rarity and quality puts it in a league of its own, and the world’s most serious whisky collectors will wait patiently for many years for a bottle to come on to the market.”
According to Bonhams, the previous world record was set by the auction house in May this year when another of the same bottle, also from 1926, sold for £814,081.
Two Pop Artists – Valerio Adami and Peter Blake – were commissioned by Macallan to design 24 labels for a very limited edition of the whisky, with 12 carrying the Adami label and 12 of Blake’s.
It is not known how many Adami bottles still exist, although one is said to have been destroyed in an earthquake in Japan in 2011 and at least one is believed to have been drunk.
The bottle sold on Wednesday was bought by the seller directly from the Macallan distillery for an undisclosed sum in 1994.
In May, Bonhams Hong Kong sold a bottle of the Macallan Peter Blake 1926 60-year-old for £751,703.
