Latest Treasures from Bowmore's Vault: The Ultimate Rare Collection

It’s fun to sip and discuss the ins and outs of Islay’s various whiskies, and most peat lovers have their favorite. But when it comes to picking the Islay distiller with the strongest suit in aged whiskies, there is no debate: it’s Bowmore. As the oldest distillery on the island, Bowmore’s reputation for ultra-aged releases somehow seems fitting. It’s very much Islay’s elder statesman, standing somewhat apart from its more precocious fellow islanders with a certain dignified, almost aloof, image. The peated element in Bowmore’s whisky doesn’t scream quite as loudly as the others do either, but is instead more subtle and understated, defining the Bowmore style.

Despite a somewhat imposing image, Bowmore is a friendly place that welcomes whisky lovers to visit its centuries-old cellars and its airy malt barns. Yet there is a mystique to it all, and much of that aura swirls about those aged whisky archives—most notably those from the legendary #1 Vault, said to be the oldest maturation warehouse in the world, which has held some of the great treasures of whisky history.

Bowmore’s modern reputation as an aged whisky house was ignited by the legendary Black Bowmore 1964, a batch of first-fill sherry cask-finished whiskies filled on November 5, 1964 and first released in 1993, priced at a mere $150 a bottle. Black Bowmore altered the universe for Islay and for single malt overall, recasting its image into a dram for connoisseurs. Four more releases of Black Bowmore 1964 would follow—in 1994, 1995, 2007, and 2016. That final lot was release-priced at £16,000 (about $20,000) a bottle, quite a climb from the original price. In 2021, the Black Bowmore Archive Cabinet, containing a complete set of those releases was auctioned by the distillery at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, fetching a winning hammer price of $450,358.

This month comes Bowmore’s latest tour de force in the ultra-aged space, the Ultimate Rare Collection. Although presented as a collection, the bottles will be sold individually. Here they are:

The Bowmore Ultimate Rare Collection

Bowmore 50 year old 1969, 46.9%, $42,000, 339 bottles

The final offering in this 50 year old Vaults Series, distilled in 1969 and following the legendary 1964 as well as the 1965 and 1966 releases. This expression combines American oak bourbon barrels and hogsheads.

Bowmore 40 year old Annual Limited Release, 48.7%, $9,000, 160 bottles

This is the most limited of these three releases, coming from the difficult years of the early 1980s when Islay distilleries were cutting back on production and Diageo’s Port Ellen Distillery was closing.

Bowmore 30 year old, 45.3%, $2,650, 2,556 bottles
Distilled in the 1990s, matured in sherry hogsheads and bourbon barrels, bottled at cask strength. Bowmore plans to release the 30 and 40 year olds every year, but the 50 year old vintage expression in this collection is finite.

The new releases are likely to make waves at auction. A bottle of Bowmore 1969 (previously released in some markets), achieved the market’s 9th-highest hammer price in May, the same month that the Bowmore Arc-52 The Mokume Edition topped our list.

While it leads the way among Islay distilleries in ultra-aged releases, Bowmore isn’t the only scotch whisky house that’s launching its ultra-aged whiskies in a prestige range lately. In 2020, The Macallan moved its 40 and 50 year old expressions into The Red Collection, and those bottles appear regularly in Whisky Advocate’s auction coverage. In addition, William Grant & Sons developed new packaging for its Glenfiddich Time Re:Imagined Collection last year.