AN investor has seen a bottle of malt acquired in 2015 triple in value following a sale which reflected the scale of interest in rare malts.
In an online auction run by Just Whisky a Macallan 50 Year Old 1949 Millennium Decanter bought for £11,500 four years ago sold for £34,720, including buyers commission.
Read more: Macallan producer hails strong overseas sales amid Brexit uncertainty
The sale price far exceded the pre-auction estimate of up to £26,000.
Just Whisky director Graham Crane said the results demonstrated that there remains strong demand for exceptional whiskies.
A bottle of The Macallan 72 Year Old in Lalique fetched £90,750, the highest price achieved in the latest monthly auction. The seller had acquired the bottle for $60,000 last year (worth around £45,800 at the time of the deal).
Read more: Management change looming at owner of whisky distillery
Sales of malt have boomed in overseas markets such as China in recent years. The emergence of a new class of affluent consumers has stoked demand for goods seen as prestigious.
Overseas buyers have acquired whisky producers such as the BenRiach Distillery Company.
Loch Lomond Distillers is targeting expansion in the Chinese market after it was acquired by a major Asian investment firm, Hillhouse Capital, earlier this year.
The whisky firm has made progress in markets such as Vietnam and Cambodia.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here