Bottle of Dalmore 50YO sells for record £28k

A bottle of Dalmore 50 Year Old has sold for a record £28,000 at auction, the highest price ever paid for a bottle of the limited edition release of which just 60 bottles were made.

Created by Dalmore’s Master Blender Richard Paterson in 1978, the youngest spirit in the blend is believed to have been distilled in 1926, which was blended with several older whiskies distilled at Dalmore in the 19th century.

Available for around £6,000 in 2012, a previous bottle sold for £14,300 in January 2017, £18,600 in March 2017 and then £22,100 in August 2017, demonstrating the escalating value in Scotch whisky.

Only 60 hand-numbered bottles of Dalmore 50 year old were produced, packaged in hand-cut crystal decanters in a hardwood presentation case and bottled at 52%.

Bottle number one was sold to an Italian buyer at Whisky-Online Auctions in Blackpool this week for £28,000 (US$36,700), setting a new record for the highest price paid for a bottle.

“The Dalmore 50-year-old is a combination of liquid genius and pure beauty,” said Wayne Ormerod, founder of Whisky-Online Auctions.

“There are very few single malt Scotch whiskies distilled in the 1920s that have been bottled at such an age combined with a high bottling strength. This is a whisky that for many years never really established the reputation it truly deserves.

“We know this bottle very well having handled multiple examples over the years and although our estimate was conservative at £18,000-£22,000, we were very confident that we would overperform on behalf of our client.

“We had numerous interested bidders from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and even strong bidders from here in the UK. But when the hammer finally fell it was nice to see a regular customer from Italy secured themselves a fantastic piece of Scottish liquid history.”