A bottle of Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 sold for $1.1 million at auction Wednesday, making it the most expensive bottle of whisky in world history. The 750-milliliters Macallan 1926 single malt were sold to unnamed buyer who phoned in from Asia, according to Bonhams, the Scottish auction house that sold it.
The Macallan Valerio Adami aged for 60 years before its 1986 bottling. Much of its value derives from its label, designed by Italian pop artists Valerio Adami. Macallan made only 24 bottles of this particular whisky, packaging 12 with the Adami label, and the other half with labels designed by British artist Peter Blake.
David Robertson, a Macallan master distiller in the 1990s and 2000s, recalled tasting a bottle of the world’s most expensive whisky. “When I tasted it, the whisky was quite intense, dry, and tasted of dried fruit with some hint of warming spice,” Robertson told The New York Times.
Sotheby’s in New York is set to auction off another Macallan 1926 on October 13, a sale which could make one of the Peter Blake-designed bottles the most expensive in history. Whisky sale records are apparently only made to be broken.
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