A unique set of six bottles of Dalmore whisky fetched a world record £830,000 at auction on Friday.
Dalmore said £100,000 from the sale will be donated to the V&A Dundee, as part of its four-year partnership with Scotland’s first design museum.
The only complete collection of The Dalmore Decades – comprising six vintage single malts spanning 1951 to 2000 – direct from the distillery, went under the hammer in a special one-lot auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
Collectors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the UK competed to secure the six-bottle collection, with the winning bid going to an Asian private collector.
New auction record
The £830,000 sum set a new auction record for The Dalmore.
It was also the highest value for a whisky lot sold at Sotheby’s so far this year and the most valuable whisky lot ever sold by Sotheby’s in Asia.
A percentage of the sale will go to the V&A Dundee, following The Dalmore’s announcement in 2020 of a four-year partnership with the aim of nurturing and championing Scottish culture and creative talent on a global stage.
Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s Spirits Specialist, said: “The Dalmore is truly an icon of the whisky world and this collection encapsulates everything that the Distillery stands for.
“It also highlights the key elements that collectors are looking for in today’s premium whisky market.
“Representing yet another benchmark, the record result speaks volumes of the strong global demand we have witnessed over the past two years.”
Oldest malts ever
The six-bottle collection was created by Richard Paterson, The Dalmore’s Master Distiller, comprising his personal selection of single malts from 1951, 1967, 1979, 1980, 1995, 2000.
Encapsulating sixty years of whisky making, the set includes one of the oldest malts ever to have been released by the distillery and the first Scotch whisky created in the new millennium.
The current record for a single bottle of The Dalmore was set at Sotheby’s in May last year when two bottles named The Cromarty and The MacKenzie were sold to bidders from Asia for £266,200