A cask of rare scotch whisky has set a new world record after selling for £16m to a private collector in Asia.
The single malt dates to November 1975 and smashed the previous record of £1m set in April this year, the Financial Times reports.
Known as Cask No 3, the whisky was produced at the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery, on the Scottish island of Islay. It sold for more than twice the amount the distillery and its entire stock was bought for in 1997.
Thomas Moradpour, the president and chief executive of Ardbeg’s owner, Glenmorangie, a subsidiary of the LVMH luxury goods group, said the record-breaking cask was a source of pride for the local community.
He said the people of Islay had seen the distillery come back from the brink of extinction to become “one of the most sought-after whiskies in the world”.
The distillery will draw around 88 bottles of whisky from the cask in each of the next five years and deliver them to the buyer. That’s about £36,000 per bottle.
The whisky writer and expert Charles MacLean described the £16m cask as “a remarkable piece of liquid history”, adding: “The factors which make a particular whisky investable are threefold: rarity, flavour and variety.
“And collectors do love scotch, because of the provenance and history.”
Bill Lumsden, the head of distilling and whisky creation at Ardbeg, said: “I’ve really only tasted a whisky like this two or three times in my career.
“It has an emotional, comforting quality to it I find hard to put into words.”
He said 1970s casks left in the distillery’s warehouses could be counted “on just a few hands”, adding that most whisky from that era was put into blends, meaning single malts are rare.
The record sale comes after the supermarket Morrisons accidentally priced bottles of a scotch whisky at just £2.50, a 93% discount from its usual price of £36, last month.
The Glenlivet Caribbean Reserve is described by the distillery as a new rum-barrel-finished single malt scotch that “combines the heritage of scotch whisky with the flavour and soul of the Caribbean”.
Whisky lovers piled in, posting their delight on social media, only to discover their big orders had been thwarted at the last minute.
The pricing error was identified by Morrisons, and because of minimum unit pricing legislation making the charge for each bottle illegal, the retailer cancelled all orders.
• This article was amended on 10 July 2022 to clarify that the £16m Ardbeg cask will provide about 88 bottles per year for five years, so 440 bottles in total.
