At triple the top estimate, the bottle of Macallan Fine & Rare 60-Year-Old 1926 set a new auction record for any bottle of wine or spirit.
Distilled over 90 years ago and aged in European oak for 60 years, this is one of only 40 bottles that Macallan produced in 1986. Twelve each were labelled by artists Sir Peter Blake and Valerio Adami, one was hand painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon, two had no labels at all and the remaining carried this ‘Fine and Rare’ label.
Back in 1987 a bottle of 1926 Macallan was sold in New York for £5000 and as recently as 2001 McTear’s in Glasgow sold another for £15,000. Prices have since rocketed with the Dillon labelled bottle sold for at Christie’s in London in November 2018 for £1m. Should the most recently-sold bottle ever be opened the cost per shot will be £60,000.
The collection – that included a 178 bottle-strong collection of the Fine and Rare series dating from 1926 to 1991 - had been assembled by an American connoisseur-investor over the past 20 years.
