Whisky Auction Update August 18th: Play Your Cards Right

A rare bottle of Japanese whisky sold for a record price in what’s been a busy August so far. Whisky Auctioneer achieved a record-winning bid of $38,304 for a bottle of Hanyu Ichiro’s Malt Card Series Two of Hearts Cask No. 482. The Scottish auction house has handled four sales of this expression in the past four years, starting with a bottle selling for $9,607 in October 2019, just a quarter of the current price. Whisky Auctioneer sold 16 bottles from the Malt Card series this month, fetching a combined value of $162,216. Elsewhere, Scotch Whisky Auctions set a new auction record for Macallan The Red Collection 60 year old, gathering a bid of more than a quarter of a million dollars. It’s also the highest hammer price ever recorded for a single bottle of whisky at Scotch Whisky Auctions, which entered the online auction market in 2011. Read on for more details in our mid-month report.

Whisky.Auction

Auction ended August 1^st

• Scotch: Balvenie 1937 50 year old , $25,496. This is Balvenie’s first 50 year old bottling, which was released in the late 1980s.
• Japanese: Karuizawa 1981 32 year old Cask No. 4380, $8,924. Japanese wine and spirit merchants Shinanoya released 118 bottles of this release as a 10th-anniversary bottling.
• American: Double Eagle Very Rare 20 year old (2022 Release), $7,904. The fourth edition of Double Eagle from Buffalo Trace, a release of 1,000 bottles.

Unicorn Auctions “No Reserves: Private Collection” Auction

Auction ended August 6^th

• American: Colonel E.H. Taylor Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon, $13,000. Of all the modern Colonel E.H. Taylor releases, this first release from 2011 always commands the highest prices.
• Japanese: Yamazaki 18 year old Mizunara Japanese Oak Cask, $4,125. Rated 96 points, this 2017 release originally cost $1,000 a bottle.
• Scotch: Macallan 30 year old Sherry Oak, $4,000. Macallan 30 year old is one of the finest 30 year old scotches around, this older presentation sold for less than the price of the latest edition.

Whisky Auctioneer

Auction ended August 7th

• Scotch: Samaroli Laphroaig 1967 15 year old Sherry Wood, $73,032. Although not a world record, this substantial result exceeded the $51,252 winning bid for one of these bottlings at Whisky Auctioneer back in January.
• Japanese: Hanyu Ichiro’s Malt Card Series Two of Hearts Cask No. 482, $38,304. A new auction record for this 2009 release, this was distilled at Hanyu distillery in 1986 and finished in a madeira cask.
• American: Michter’s Celebration Sour Mash (2022 Release), $10,980. With only 328 bottles produced, this is always a rare find at auction.

Scotch Whisky Auctions

Auction ended August 13^th

• Scotch: Macallan The Red Collection 60 year old. $258,992. A new auction record for this 2020 bottling, which has seldom gone under the hammer since release.
• Japanese: Hakushu 1989 Sherry Cask, $8,887. A 2009 cask strength release bottled at 62% from a Spanish oak sherry butt.
• American: Double Eagle Very Rare 20 year old, $8,887. Bidding reached nearly $1,000 more than the bottle at Whisky.Auction above.

Lot of the Week

Released in 2004 to mark master distiller Jimmy Russell’s 50 years in the business, this age-stated bourbon came from hand-selected barrels laid down by Russell. It was bottled at 110 proof (55%) as a limited release of 9,000 bottles for the Japanese market. Wild Turkey marked Russell’s anniversary outside of Japan with a 101-proof bottling (50.5%), rated 94 points, in a run of 5,500 bottles.

Lot: Wild Turkey Tribute 15 year old (Japanese Release)
Sold at: Whisky Auctioneer
Hammer Price: $1,724

Upcoming Auctions

Bottles to bid on in the next few weeks:

August 24^th, Bonhams Skinner: Springbank Millennium Collection The auctioneer is expecting bids in the range of $38,000–$50,000 for this full set of 6 bottles aged 25–50 years with accompanying miniatures.

September 1^st, Tennants: Sherriff’s Bowmore 18 year old This auction house in Yorkshire, England is selling a private whisky collection which includes this rare example of aged Bowmore from decades ago, though a similar bottle sold in June for far less than the estimates on this bottle.

September 12^th, Whisky.Auction: Hunter Laing Winston Churchill Collection Port Ellen 1983 38 year old The independent bottlers and owner of Ardnahoe Distillery released 150 bottles of this rare Islay single malt in 2021, which was distilled during the final months of production before Port Ellen Distillery closed in May 1983.