Here’s a look through some of the highlights and stand out bottles from our May whisky and spirits sale.
Scotch Whisky
This month’s auction featured plenty of big names. The highest price of £9400 went to The Macallan 2008 Distil Your World London Edition. There were plenty of vintage Macallans on offer, including Macallan 1950 Campbell, Hope & King bottled in the 1960s, which reached an impressive £6000. Fetching the same hammer price was the Dalmore 1966 40 Year Old, while this beautifully packaged Bowmore 32 Year Old No Corners To Hide, a collaboration featuring a hand-signed print by acclaimed Marvel and DC Comics illustrator Frank Quitely, sold for a record £5600.
It’s not just the extravagantly packaged or incredibly limited release bottles that always attract the most attention. If there are old distillery releases lurking in the back of your cupboards or bar, now may be the time to bring them out. Prices for older editions of standard releases are increasing again. You can see from our past auctions how The Macallan 10 Year Old bottled in the 1980s has been increasing in price over recent months. This time one bottle fetched £625, and a more recent release of The Macallan 10 Year Old bottled in the 2000s reached £470.
Old releases such as these 1970s bottles of Laphroaig 10 Year Old (sold for £3400) and Springbank 12 Year Old (sold for £1650) also continue to perform strongly at auction.
Around the World
As ever, whiskies from around the world were up for grabs and there were impressive prices achieved by non-Scotch whiskies. Continued interest in the much sought after Buffalo Trace Antique Collection saw some high prices, including this William Larue Weller 2014 Release (sold for £2100).
In our Irish whiskey category the top lot was this Midleton Very Rare 1984, the first release in the popular series, selling for an impressive £1550.
Japanese whisky continues to entice collectors and among the top auction lots was a Yamazaki 25 Year Old (sold for £8000) and prices continue to rise among popular bottles such as Hibiki 17 Year Old and Yamazaki 18 Year Old fetching £675 and £875 respectively.
Cognac
To collectors and connoisseurs of whisky the names of Narsai David and Darrell Corti will be familiar. The pair have selected and bottled some now legendary whiskies and were instrumental in the growth in popularity of single malt and single cask Scotch whisky in the US. Their talents for cask selection go beyond just Scotch whisky and this month we featured a selection of their superb Cognacs bottled by Avery’s of Bristol. Amongst them was this Avery’s Hine Single Cask Selection, bottled in 1978, that fetched a hammer price of £340 after some competitive late bidding. Also seeing some late auction action was the Avery’s Exshaw Single Cask Selection, bottled a year later in 1977, finishing on £280.
Other Cognac highlights included a 1970s Remy Martin Louis XIII which sold for £2200, a pair of Bisquit Dubouche 1865 selected for Great Britain and bottled in the 1930s that fetched £1300 each and a sextet of Barriasson & Co 1914 Grande Champagne Cognac that sold for between £450 to £470 each.
