Rare bottle of Macallan whisky sells for a record $1.1 million

It's considered the Rolls-Royce of the whisky world, and for the price one private collector paid for a bottle, he could have purchased three new Phantoms.

On Wednesday, Bonhams in Edinburgh auctioned off a 60-year-old Macallan Valerio Adami 1926. It sold for a record $1.1 million to a collector in Asia who bid by phone. In 1986, Macallan produced 24 bottles of the whisky, commissioning Adami, an Italian painter, to design labels for 12 of the bottles; the other labels were created by Peter Blake, co-designer of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album sleeve.

Martin Green, the whisky specialist at Bonhams, told Reuters that because the bottle is so rare, it's unlikely its new owner will ever drink a drop of his new purchase. "Obviously we don't know what will happen to it, but anyone who can spend around a million pounds for a bottle of whisky could afford to drink it," he said. "But it's an object of beauty in its own right — almost a museum piece." No one knows for sure how many of the Adami bottles are still in existence — one sold at auction in May for $1.06 million, one is believed to have been destroyed during a 2011 earthquake in Japan, and another was likely actually opened and consumed.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up