A bottle of 62-year-old Dalmore single malt has sold for £114,000 at auction, doubling its pre-sale estimate and making it the most expensive bottle of whisky sold to date by Christie’s.
The Dalmore, The Kildermorie, Aged 62 Years, was one of only 12 bottles created by Dalmore master blender Richard Paterson from casks of single malt laid down in 1868, 1878, 1926 and 1939.
The 12 bottles, released by the Highland distillery in 2002, were each named after a key feature of Dalmore – Kildermorie being the nearby loch which is the distillery’s water source.
This bottle was sold by Christie’s in London last week for £114,000 (including buyer’s premium), double its pre-sale estimate of £40,000-60,000.
Christopher Munro, head of Christie’s London wine department, labelled the sum paid for the whisky ‘astonishing’ and said it was the highest price yet paid for a single bottle of whisky at Christie’s.
Another of the 12 bottles – The 12 Pointer, referring to Dalmore’s stag emblem – was sold by Sotheby’s in London in September this year for £91,650.
However, both sums fall short of the S$250,000 (£125,000) paid at Singapore’s Changi Airport for another of the 12 bottles in 2011, at the height of the luxury spending boom in the Far East.
Last week’s Christie’s auction also featured a number of Macallan single malts, many bottled for the Italian market.
A bottle of Macallan 37 Year Old Fine & Rare, distilled in 1940, fetched £19,200, a little short of its pre-sale high estimate, while a two-bottle lot of Macallan 18 Year Old, one distilled in 1970 and the other in 1972, both bottled for Giovinetti & Figli, sold for £3,120, more than double the pre-sale high estimate.
