Last week, during an auction staged by Sotheby’s at The Macallan Estate in Speyside, Scotland, a bottle of The Macallan 1926, featuring the Fine & Rare label, sold for £2,125,000 / $2,807,975, becoming the second most valuable bottle of whisky ever sold in British sterling, but the most valuable bottle ever sold at auction as measured in US dollars.* Sotheby’s now holds the top three prices for any bottle of whisky sold at auction.
The world’s most valuable whisky led Live from The Macallan Estate, the first auction ever to take place at The Macallan Distillery. Comprising whiskies from The Macallan drawn almost exclusively from private collections worldwide, the sale – conceived to mark the centenary of the distillation of The Macallan 1926 in the same location where the auction took place today – brought together a selection of the brand’s finest and most sought-after single malts, spanning decades. Comprising 42 lots, the landmark ‘white-glove’ auction was 100% sold, achieving an above-estimate total of £3.3 million / $4.4 million (est. £2.4-3.2m), and becoming the second most valuable whisky auction Sotheby’s has ever held after The Ultimate Whisky Collection in 2019. 86% of the lots sold achieved prices above their high estimates.
Bottled in 1986 at 60 Years Old, the fabled 1926 vintage has long been the benchmark for collectible whisky, its extraordinary value driven as much by its rarity as by its enduring place in the history of Scotch whisky collecting.
After maturing for six decades, just 40 bottles of The Macallan 1926 were drawn from a single sherry seasoned oak cask (cask number 263) in 1986, representing the oldest vintage ever bottled by The Macallan. A maximum of 14 were decorated with the Fine and Rare label, 12 were designed by Sir Peter Blake, and a further 12 by Italian artist Valerio Adami. Two bottles were left unlabelled – one was later hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon (the first bottle of whisky to surpass £1 million when sold in 2018; the other is the last unlabelled Macallan 1926 in existence.
The Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Years Old 1926 is one of 14 bottles released in 2002 which became the foundation of The Macallan’s iconic Fine & Rare collection. This was the first of these celebrated 1926 vintage bottlings to return to auction since 2023, and the first Fine & Rare example to appear at auction since 2019, when Sotheby’s in London set a then world auction record of £1.5 million / $1.9 million. The £2.1 million achieved today establishes a new auction record for a bottle of The Macallan 1926 Fine & Rare. In US dollar terms, the result exceeds the previous record set seven years ago by almost 50%, an increase of approximately $900,000.
The auction was an exclusive, invite-only event attended by 50 of the world’s leading whisky collectors, with additional participation from collectors around the world who chose to bid online and on the telephones via Sotheby’s staff in the room.
The second most valuable lot in the sale was a complete set of The Macallan in Lalique Six Pillars Collection, among the first true luxury collections in the whisky world, which realised £350,000 / $462,490.
