Karuizawa whisky tops Sotheby’s HK’s largest online spirit sale

Despite the global economic slowdown, Sotheby’s Hong Kong achieved strong results in its latest and largest online spirit auction in the region, with Karuizawa claiming the top three lots of the sale.

Ending on 5 May, the two-week “Distilled: whisky, moutai and more” sale was the largest online spirit sale the auction house has held in Hong Kong. With an impressive sell-through rate of 94%, 124 lots were eventually sold. The sale has generated a total of HK$5,946,417 and welcomed active bidders from 13 countries, where 26% of them are new clients to Sotheby’s.

Unsurprisingly, Japanese ‘silent’ distillery Karuizawa topped the sale. The three most valuable lots were Karuizawa 52-Year-Old Cask #8852 Streams of Time 1965 (one bottle), Karuizawa 36 Views of Mount Fuji (30 Bottles) – both sold for HK$471,200 – and Karuizawa Aqua of Life 50-Year-Old 1968 (one bottle), which sold for HK$434,000.

As the Karuizawa distillery closed in 2011, we can expect the value of the bottles to increase over time due to the very limited existing stocks on the market. In March 2020, a Karuizawa 52-Year-Old Cask #5627 Zodiac Rat 1960 broke the record for the most valuable Japanese whisky ever sold when it achieved £363,000 at Sotheby’s in London.

Aside from this, independent bottlers also shone in the sale. 10 lots of rare whiskies produced by legendary bottler Silvano Samaroli were all sold. Silvano began his independent bottlings in earnest with the Samaroli Flowers series. These whiskies were carefully selected and the label designs were drawn by Silvano himself. The Coleburn Samaroli Flowers 12-Year-Old, which sold for HK$37,200, is one example of this inimitable series, and to increase its desirability, Coleburn itself is a closed distillery, so very few of its bottles exist.