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Single bottle of The Dalmore whisky sells for £93,750
A rare 49-year-old single malt whisky from The Dalmore, housed in an 80kg glass sculpture co-created with Zaha Hadid Architects, has sold at Sotheby’s for £93,750.
Sotheby’s hosted the sale of a decanter of The Dalmore Luminary No.2 ‘The Rare’, a 49-year-old single malt from The Dalmore Distillery, at the end of last week. The Dalmore’s parent company Whyte & Mackay will donate proceeds from the sale in their entirety to V&A Dundee.
The Dalmore Luminary No.2 ‘The Rare’ is the second release in The Luminary Series, a unique three-part partnership between the distillery and V&A Dundee.
The whisky sold at Sotheby’s is one of three bottles ever made. The liquid is housed in a unique glass sculpture co-created with Melodie Leung, director at Zaha Hadid Architects, and made of one continuous piece of glass.
Fiaz Elson from The Glass Foundry helped create the sculpture, placing it in kiln in a handmade mould and taking the glass to temperature before lowering one degree at a time over a 12 week period.
The sculpture has undergone over 500 hours of hand polishing, and weighs 80kg.
‘The Rare’ whisky itself was created in a collaboration between Leung and The Dalmore’s master whisky makers Gregg Glass and Richard Paterson OBE.
The liquid was matured in American white oak ex-Bourbon casks and finished in an assemblage, encompassing a rare Port Colheita Pipe 1963, an exceptionally rare 30 Year Old Apostoles Sherry Cask and Select Bourbon Barrels. The whisky was further finished in a 1951/virgin oak hybrid cask, air dried at The Dalmore and hand-toasted by Gregg Glass.
Only three bottles and two sculptures have been created. A second complete set will be held in archive at the distillery and one further decanter will be saved for a final Luminary Series Compendium to come in the future, which will include all three releases.
Jonny Fowle, global head of spirits at Sotheby’s, said: “This is a thoroughly deserved result for a true collector’s piece that combines to brilliant effect a highly aged liquid, a high concept design and a worthy cause. The Dalmore is an icon of the whisky world and this second iteration in their Luminary series encapsulates all the key elements collectors are looking for in today’s premium whisky market.”