Cask of scotch whisky bought for record £16m in private sale

theguardian.com:

A cask of rare scotch whisky has set a new world record after selling for £16m to a private collector in Asia.

The single malt dates to November 1975 and smashed the previous record of £1m set in April this year, the Financial Times reports.

Known as Cask No 3, the whisky was produced at the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery, on the Scottish island of Islay. It sold for more than twice the amount the distillery and its entire stock was bought for in 1997.

Thomas Moradpour, the president and chief executive of Ardbeg’s owner, Glenmorangie, a subsidiary of the LVMH luxury goods group, said the record-breaking cask was a source of pride for the local community.

He said the people of Islay had seen the distillery come back from the brink of extinction to become “one of the most sought-after whiskies in the world”.

Each of the 88 bottles were priced at about £36,000 each. They will be drawn from the cask for each of the next five years and delivered to the buyer.

The whisky writer and expert Charles MacLean described the £16m cask as “a remarkable piece of liquid history”, adding: “The factors which make a particular whisky investable are threefold: rarity, flavour and variety.

“And collectors do love scotch, because of the provenance and history.”

Bill Lumsden, the head of distilling and whisky creation at Ardbeg, said: “I’ve really only tasted a whisky like this two or three times in my career.

“It has an emotional, comforting quality to it I find hard to put into words.”

He said 1970s casks left in the distillery’s warehouses could be counted “on just a few hands”, adding that most whisky from that era was put into blends, meaning single malts are rare.

The record sale comes after the supermarket Morrisons accidentally priced bottles of