On October 9th, Sotheby’s sold the ninth bottle of Macallan 1926 60 year old to break a million dollars at auction. Held at the Macallan Distillery, Sotheby’s achieved a hammer price of £1.7 million for Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old. This met Sotheby’s low pre-sale estimate, but fell just shy of the record hammer price of £1.75 million set by Sotheby’s for the Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 60 year old in 2023.
With buyer’s premiums added, the equivalent price in U.S. dollars was $2,810,874, the favorable exchange rate putting this figure ahead of the equivalent value of the 2023 sale of the Valerio Adami label. Sotheby’s recognized both auctions were conducted in the UK, so with a hammer price falling £50,000 short, this does not represent a new record. Nor, after a three-year wait, did it break the $3 million barrier. It is, however, a new record for the Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old label, beating the earlier record set in 2019, and a fitting way to mark the centenary of its distillation.
After maturing for six decades, just 40 bottles of The Macallan 1926 were drawn from a single sherry-seasoned oak cask (No. 263) in 1986, representing the oldest vintage bottled by Macallan. A maximum of 14 were decorated with the Fine and Rare label, 12 were designed by Sir Peter Blake, and a further 12 by Italian artist Valerio Adami. Irish artist Michael Dillon hand-painted one bottle, and the other is the last unlabeled Macallan 1926 60 year old in existence. The Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old was released in 2002, becoming the foundation of Macallan’s iconic Fine & Rare collection.
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The auction of private collections predominantly featured Macallan distilled and bottled in the 20th century, including Macallan Anniversary Malts, Gran Reserva, and Red Ribbon releases. Two-thirds of the hammer prices exceeded the high estimates for the lots, and 100% of lots sold. Macallan 1986 Romantica Collection was Lot 1, a three-bottle set created by Macallan exclusively for the sale in honor of the centenary of Macallan 1926 60 year old. Inside each bottle was Macallan 1986 40 year old drawn from a single sherry-seasoned European oak cask No. 9925, and bottled at 42.6%, the same strength as the Macallan 1926 60 year old bottled in 1986. Macallan commissioned the three original Macallan 1926 60 year old artists, namely Valerio Adami, Sir Peter Blake, and Michael Dillon, to create an original work celebrating the passage of time from 1986 to 2026. They were presented in a bespoke presentation cabinet containing remarkable artifacts from the creative process, including Valerio Adami’s paintbrush, original collage elements from Sir Peter Blake, and a preliminary sketch from Michael Dillon. The set sold for a hammer price of $171,959, with proceeds split between three charities selected by the artists.
Additional sale highlights included a full set of Macallan in Lalique decanters from the Six Pillars collection which garnered an impressive $370,374, far above recent bids for individual bottles. A bottle of Macallan 1937 The Golden Age of Travel – The Ocean Liner sailed off with a hammer price of $112,435. This is a rebottling from 2015, so the liquid inside is only 34 years old, but only 50 bottles were released. Then there was the return of the once record-breaking bottle No. 3 of Macallan The Reach 81 year old; a one-of-one release from 2022 with a red-lined case that Sotheby’s previously sold in October 2022 for $270,487 direct from Macallan, with proceeds going to charity. Four years later, the one-of-one edition, the oldest Macallan in the sale, only reached a hammer price of $138,890, 56% lower than its last appearance (hammer price fell from £240,000 to £105,000).
The sale has done much to shore up the Macallan secondary market, one of the partnership’s aims, and brought the auction to the distillery, reaffirming demand for its most coveted historic bottlings. Yet, three years on from the Macallan 1926 60 year old record, the failure to surpass that benchmark, coupled with the conspicuous absence of the Red Collection, TIME:SPACE, Folio, and other significant series from the past decade, suggests greater caution remains over the value of contemporary Macallan releases. Whether this renewed focus on historic bottlings will translate into stronger results for modern releases at future auctions remains to be seen. The 56% fall in the hammer price of the one-of-one Macallan The Reach 81 year old offered a more sobering reminder that, despite the strength of its auction heritage, the distillery has yet to resolve all its secondary-market challenges.
The table below shows every million-dollar whisky sold at auction so far, with Sotheby’s selling the three highest-value bottles of all time, and Bonhams handling the most million-dollar bottle sales.
10 Bottles of Whisky That Broke the Million-Dollar Barrier at Auction
|
Bottling |
Price (including buyer’s premiums) |
Auction House |
Date |
|
Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 60 year old |
$2,724,908 |
Sotheby’s |
Nov 23, 2023 |
|
Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old |
$2,810,874 |
Sotheby’s |
Oct 9, 2026 |
|
Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old |
$1,873,951 |
Sotheby’s |
Oct 19, 2019 |
|
Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 60 year old |
$1,548,020 |
Whisky Auctioneer |
Feb 22, 2021 |
|
Macallan Michael Dillon 1926 60 year old |
$1,528,800 |
Christie’s |
Nov 29, 2018 |
|
Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 60 year old |
$1,180,703 |
Whisky Auctioneer |
Feb 17, 2020 |
|
Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 60 year old |
$1,102,619 |
Bonhams |
Oct 3, 2018 |
|
Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 60 year old |
$1,100,196 |
Bonhams |
May 18, 2018 |
|
Yamazaki 50 year old Club Natsume |
$1,052,712 |
Bonhams |
May 30, 2026 |
|
Macallan Peter Blake 1926 60 year old |
$1,014,273 |
Bonhams |
May 18, 2018 |
Results converted to dollars using xe.com