$54,000 Bottle of The 1926 Macallan Becomes Most Expensive Bottle of Scotch Ever Sold.

$54,000 Bottle of The 1926 Macallan Becomes Most Expensive Bottle of Scotch Ever Sold

Christie’s recently conducted the first auction of spirits to be held in New York since Prohibition. A large crowd gathered in the Christie’s saleroom at Rockefeller Center to watch this historic moment in auction history, and the total for the 100-lot selection of fine and rare whiskies, cognac, armagnac, calvados and Chartreuse fetched an excellent $304,800.

The top single-bottle lot of the day was a 1926 Macallan, which sold for an outstanding $54,000 and became the most expensive bottle of scotch ever sold by Christie’s anywhere in the world. Bottled in 1986 after spending a remarkable sixty years in wood barrel, the bottle was expected to fetch between $20,000 to $30,000.

It was bought by a New York private collector.

Elsewhere in the sale, a bottle of straight rye whiskey made from George Washington’s recipe for the first time in 200 years at the George Washington Distillery at Historic Mount Vernon in 2003 fetched $6,000.