Matured for some 60 years in noble casks, and labelled by a pop-art artist, the liquid gold is now coming up for auction. Experts reckon it could fetch as much as $1.2 million.
For George Bernhard Shaw, the renowned Irish poet and whisky-aficionado, it was not only important to properly enjoy the ritual of drinking the treasured spirit. He also, through his «whisky is liquid sunlight» description, afforded it a poetic heritage.
Now, the whisky in question is not only «liquid sunlight», but more importantly is high percentage liquid gold. As such it is better seen as a value asset rather than as a tipple.
League of its Own
In this case the noble drop is a bottle of «Macallan Valerio Adami 1926». British auction house Bonhams has been tasked with auctioning the whisky on Wednesday in Edinburgh, and is expecting to fetch a record price of up to £900,000, or $1.2 million. This was reported recently by industry magazine «The Spirits Business».
Martin Green, whisky expert at Bonhams, describes the Macallan 1926 as the «holy grail of whiskies,» which in terms of quality puts it in a league of its own. Whisky collectors have waited years for such an extremely rare vintage to come onto the market.
Stamp of Italian Artist
The whisky to be auctioned is one of a limited vintage of only 12, bottled in 1986 by the Macallan distillery in northern Scotland. Prior to bottling the liquid gold had matured in barrels for some 60 years, and was labelled by the Italian pop-art artist Valerio Adami.
This is not the first Macallan to change ownership this year. In May, a bottle sold for HK$7.96 million ($1 million) at an auction in Hong Kong. Just prior to that, two bottles of Macallan fetched some $600,000 each at a sale in Dubai. It is unknown how many of the 12 bottles still exist.
