This month’s auction was exciting on many levels but personally my attention was on three things: cocktails, rum and Macallan.
Vintage Cocktail Ingredients
There has been an explosion in demand for vintage cocktail ingredients and whereas in the past most of the interest has been in ‘prohibition era’ originals for recreating 100 year old recipes exactly, we have seen there is now a more pragmatic approach with bidders gathering the right ingredients to make better cocktails. Some of us might not think of the 1980s as that long ago, but these bottles from 40 years ago are not the same as modern bottles.
We had just two Camparis in our latest auction a 70cl and a Litre, both were bottled in the 1980s so it’s worth noting the dramatic trends in hammer prices for both formats.
Price history for Campari bottled into 70cl and 75cl in the 1980s.
Price history for Campari bottled into 1 Litres in the 1980s.
It’s not just Campari that has seen this uptick in prices. It’s worth taking a moment to browse vintage gin hammer prices as well as results for rare vermouths and specialist liqueurs that are essential to the most popular cocktails.
Rum (Quite Possibly The Best £40 You’ll Ever Spend)
With the Rum Show rapidly approaching make sure to allow plenty of time to pick up your tasting pack for our Introduction To Old & Rare Rum virtual event which will be at 1.30pm on Saturday 31 July. There is a growing interest in investable rums and old and rare bottlings of rum. I will be sharing auction tips about what to look for when buying these rare old bottles but the main attraction is the rums themselves. We’ll be tasting five sensational rums, cheekily selected to make the most of this one off opportunity. There will be a Havana Club 7 Year Old from the 1970s, a Barbancourt 3 Star from the 1980s, a Rhum Clement from the 1990s, Foursquare 2006 an Enmore 1987 and plenty of rum and auction chat.
Macallan
Macallan continues to do well too.
