WHISKY
Going, going, gone
Macallan M may have set a new world record for the most expensive whisky sold at auction but all Scotch is made to be drunk and this extraordinary dram is no exception
current exchange rates. That’s enough to buy you nearly 24,000 bottles of Famous Grouse. The whisky, which was sold at auction
Y
at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, was a six-litre Macallan M decanter. The whisky is one of only four ‘Imperiale’ versions in the world. Two are being kept for Macallan’s archives and the other is being sold privately. The profi ts from the sale of this particular bottle have gone to local Hong Kong charities, which is fantastic. As you may already have guessed, the sale of the Macallan M smashed the Guinness World Record – by £100,000 – for the most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold at auction. Macallan already held the record for
the sale of The
Macallan 64-year-old in a Lalique Cire Perdue crystal decanter, which sold for $460,000 (£278,000) in 2010, with the money going to charity.
The M crystal decanter, designed by Fabien Baron, is 70cm tall and weighs 11.3kg, rising to 16.8kg when full. It is the biggest decanter Lalique has ever produced. It
ou might be surprised to hear that a bottle of whisky was sold in January for HK$4.9 million – just a little over £380,000 at
Yet I was not completely surprised by
the price this bottle sold for. We should be incredibly proud of the whisky we produce in Scotland. Whisky is a work of art in itself. A whisky like this one, made of more than 50
years’ worth of malts, truly deserves to be put in the best showpiece you can get your hands on, and put on a podium for everyone to look on in awe. A whisky like this merits that kind of astronomical price tag – and if all the money goes to charity, that’s even better. You may think I am talking nonsense but I
really mean it. I genuinely feel we should put whisky on a podium and show the world how good it is. But there are clearly high-net-worth individuals out there who know the value of whisky and are ready and willing to pay that kind of price to own a unique piece of history. As I have said before, I believe all whisky is made for drinking. The men in the 1940s who made the spirit that has gone into the Macallan M made it so others could enjoy it.
took 17 master craftsmen
more than 50 hours to make each one – with rumours of more than 40 attempts being destroyed due to tiny imperfections.
The whisky is selected from only a handful of casks dating from the 1940s up to the early 1990s. There is no age statement on the label. At its launch, director of malts Ken Grier said: ‘M stands for mastery and this is a combination of three great masters:
Fabien
Lalique and Macallan.’ You get
Baron, the idea – this is no
ordinary bottle of whisky. To start with, you can get three hundred 20ml drams out of
the bottle.
Some people will be aghast at the price and many others will say it is nothing more than a waste of money (but don’t
forget money went to charity). that
Many collectors are only after trophy pieces for their shelves, and you can’t get more of a trophy than the Macallan M Imperiale. That said, it probably won’t be long until its record price is broken. But a part of me wants to believe many of these wealthy purchasers buy whisky to drink it, not just to show off to their clients or friends. They buy these incredibly rare whiskies because they really do want to taste them and savour the experience.
Drinking whisky is an incredibly emotional experience. Those who are fortunate enough to try the Macallan M will no doubt remember where they were and who they were with when the dram fi rst touched their lips.
That’s what it’s really about, more than anything else – the shared experience with friends, as well as the enjoyment of the whisky.
the
And if you do want to try it, last year 1,750 standard-sized bottles were released, each with a recommended retail price of £3,000.
WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 143 WORDS BLAIR BOWMAN
‘Those who try it will remember where they were and who they were with when the dram touched their lips’
Left: An Imperiale-sized decanter of Macallan M set a new world record when it sold for just over £380,000 at auction in Hong Kong in January. The whisky was blended from casks laid down from the 1940s to the 1990s.
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