A stunning collection of rare single malt whiskies is being sold at auction. But who would acquire a collection like that? Sandra Dick finds out

The very well-off boss of a soft drinks bottling giant, Richard Leonard Gooding could afford to live in a certain style.

His sprawling French-style chateau mansion in an upscale quarter of Colorado’s Arapahoe County featured a wide, sweeping drive, beautifully landscaped lawns, crystal-clear lakes and an ornamental maze.

In his jet-lagged state, those alone were enough to make a weary visitor’s head spin. But as whisky expert Angus MacRaild was about to find, behind the doors of the impressive property lurked an intoxicating and quite unexpected treasure trove unlike anything he had ever seen before.

“I was in the middle of Colorado, several thousand feet above sea level and feeling rather spaced out from jet lag,” he recalls.

“I was quite discombobulated anyway. But inside this grand house and down the stairs in the basement was a wooden panelled room – a whisky cellar.”

As he crossed the tartan carpet, his jaw dropped. “The wooden shelves stretched from the carpet to rafters, specially designed for this whisky collection,” he recalls.

“No-one knew about this. It was like a preserved Aladdin’s Cave of treasures. It was remarkable.”

Whisky expert MacRaild had been dispatched to the high plains of Colorado to check out a collection of malt whiskies gathered by a very private enthusiast.

What he found was a real-life whisky galore.

On each shelf was crammed bottle after bottle of single malt whisky rarities. A 1926 Macallan Fine and Rare 60-year-old worth an eye-watering £1 million, bottle after bottle of 1964 Black Bowmore – each one estimated at £15,000 – a Glenfiddich 1937 Rare Collection 64, one of just 61 bottles ever produced, and dozens of highly sought-after bottles from lost distilleries: Dallas Dhu, Glenugie, Killyloch, some almost a century old.

Still reeling from encountering one of the world’s most stunning and secret collections of single malt whisky, MacRaild spotted something else that would make his heart sing.

“At the back was a typical pub wood bar with a gantry and a wee sink. It was jammed full of bottles.

“It was ridiculous,” he laughs. “There would be a fairly standard bottle of whisky that would cost maybe $60 or $70 sitting next to a bottle that was worth $3,000.

“That was his drinking stock, stuffed behind the bar, ready to be drunk.

“That told me this collector was first and foremost a drinker who loved the social aspect of Scotch whisky.”

It seemed Gooding – who had been raised surrounded by soft drinks bottles so could be forgiven for enjoying the clink of a glass bottle against a tumbler – wasn’t collecting because he wanted to make a buck. Rather, this was a man who quite simply adored a decent dram.

In the coming week, Perthshire-based Whisky Auctioneer will carry out the second part of its sale of Richard Gooding’s single malt whiskies – named “The Perfect Collection”.

The first, in February, saw more than 1,900 malts from the collection attract 1,642 bidders from 56 countries. Highlights included a rare Macallan 1926 Valerio Adami 60-year-old which alone sold for a record-breaking £825,000.

It raised more than £3 million.

The second instalment of the collection consisting of almost 2,000 bottles went on sale on Friday and will continue for a further eight days. It is expected to achieve a similar sum.

Part of the collection’s charm, says MacRaild, is it eccentricity, quality and the fact that no-one knew it was there.

“It was collected before whisky collecting took off as a global phenomenon," he says. "It was an age of innocence when collecting whisky was a niche thing.

“The internet came and changed the face of what was just a hobby.”

Born in Denver’s wealthy Belcaro neighbourhood in 1946, Richard Gooding's financial clout to lavish cash on fine whisky was never a problem.

His grandfather, James A Gooding, launched the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company of Denver in 1936, supplying bottles of soft drink across Colorado and parts of surrounding states.

After his father retired, Gooding took over as owner and chief executive officer. However, his tenure only lasted from 1979 to 1988 when, aged 42, he decided to sell the company back to the parent corporation.

The move brought him a fortune – his wealth was rumoured to be in the region of $200 million.

And what better way to celebrate than with a dram or two?

However, nipping to his local Walmart was not going to bring Richard Gooding the liquid treasures he sought.

His personal pilot, a silver-haired chap called Kirk with a bushy white moustache, recalls frequent jaunts across the Atlantic with Gooding in search of single malt whiskies.

Speaking in a video produced for the Perthshire company organising the sale of Gooding’s collection, Whisky Auctioneers, he offers a fascinating insight into the lifestyle that money can bring.

“We went to Ireland, Scotland, 10 or 20 trips specifically for auctions for purchasing whisky,” he says.

“We pulled up to Talisker and just knocked on the door. People answered and they gave us tours. It was before all the tasting rooms were open and all the displays and stuff like that.

“He would go to Macallan and start taking to the people, saying ‘Okay, I would like to have this one and this and that one and that one’.

“And they are looking at him and saying, ‘Do you want this, or this?’ And he would say ‘I want them all!’.

“He was into the whisky business long before it became as popular as it is today,” he adds.

“He tasted a lot of them when we were on these trips, but the majority of his purpose was to have a collection of one of everything that was ever made.

“The ‘perfect collection’.”

Gooding, with a self-taught knowledge of whisky and very deep pockets, enjoyed a warm welcome at distilleries which were still to witness the global explosion in whisky collecting that exists today.

“It was a golden age when you could find an incredible array of bottles,” adds MacRaild.

“Apparently he just turned up and bought stuff. He would go around Speyside with his driver and stop off at distilleries to see what was interesting.

“He would go to Gordon & MacPhail, the whisky specialist shop in Elgin which had incredible stocks, and fill his boots.”

Gooding bought at the perfect time – many of the bottles he acquired 30 years ago for a few hundred pounds are now worth several thousands.

“Richard’s mission was to collect a bottle that represented every single distillery,” said his wife Nancy, who he had met at high school in Denver.

Perhaps she was too busy enjoying her collection of horses to pay much attention to her husband’s wood-panelled cellar, groaning with bottles and where he would happily consume parts of his collection at the bar.

“He opened a lot of bottles with his friends,” says MacRaild, who has helped to catalogue the collection for the auction sale.

“You would find a fairly standard bottle of whisky that would have cost maybe $60 or $70 sitting next to a bottle that was worth $3,000.”

Yet, perhaps strangely for a man who built one of the world’s most impressive whisky collections, his life’s passion is absent from the obituary in the Denver Post following his death at the age of 67 after an 11-year struggle with melanoma.

Described as a “quiet and generous philanthropist who did not enjoy the limelight”, among his interests – aviation, boat design, architecture, music, language, food and travel – whisky does not get a mention.

“He was a person who enjoyed the concept of design,” his obituary adds, perhaps an explanation for those remarkable wooden shelves, heaving with bottles of various shapes, some with artistically designed labels, others strikingly plain, such as the most expensive of the current lot, that 1926 Macallan Fine and Rare 60-year-old?

And like that perfectly arranged collection, he took pride in presentation: he didn’t do “dressing down”, preferring a well-cut suit worn with a carefully-chosen shirt – he would always wear pink on a Wednesday as a tribute to all fighting breast cancer.

His colourful collections of shirts were matched by one of his “signature” Leonard Paris silk ties.

“His collection of ties has to be record-setting for quantity and variety,” his obituary adds.

Of course, ties are not what Richard Gooding is now known for.

Experts who have sifted through his whisky collection have described it as one of the most exciting discoveries of the whisky world. It’s “jaw-dropping”, “nothing short of overwhelming”, “eclectic” and “peerless”, they say.

Yet MacRaild says Richard Gooding was probably no different to the rest of us.

He simply loved a dram.

“Once you are bitten by the Scotch bug, that’s it for life. It’s a lifelong passion. It’s social, you can always learn more, there’s always something to discover and at the end of the day it’s a delicious drink,” he says.

“For a pleasurable evening with pals, it’s intellectual nourishment, great flavour, history and geography, all those stories attached.

“Richard Gooding loved the liquid.

“He bought whisky for his own pleasure – and he enjoyed it.”

Auction highlights - three bottles and what the catalogue says about them

Bowmore 1967 Largiemeanoch 12 Year Old

Islay’s oldest working distillery, Bowmore was established in 1779 and is now regarded as one of the most popular malts not only on Islay, but in the whole of Scotland. The distillery was acquired by Stanley P Morrison in 1963, ushering in an era of iconic single malts, including the legendary Black Bowmore, credited by many as the genesis of whisky collecting, bottled in 1995. The distillery was bought under the control Suntory the year before (it had been a stakeholder since 1989), and it remains one of the most collectible brands in Scotch whisky today.

This is an incredibly rare example, bottled under the Largiemeanoch label, a brand devised for a series of private bottlings for The Howgate Wine Co in Edinburgh in the late 1970s.

A legendary bottle of whisky, distilled at Bowmore in 1967 and bottled from a vatting of three sherry casks. A 10-year-old was also bottled.

Glenlivet Liqueur Scotch Mayor, Sworder and Co circa 1950s

This was bottled by Mayor, Sworder & Co, a fine wine merchant from London. Up until the mid-1960s, the company also had many dealings in spirits, bottling whisky and gin. The firm contracted blends from Bulloch Lade, but also produced its own label called Red Monogram.

It regularly received fillings of Glenlivet and Ardbeg for its production, and in earlier years, sought-after Longmorn malt as well. These casks would occasionally be bottled as single malts for the company's more discerning customers, as was the case here. Its Glenlivet was often pre-vatted for blending purposes, so bottled as a single malt here with an undiscernible vintage or age statement. This was bottled at some point in the early 1950s.

The early reverence for this now iconic Speyside distillery is clear in the wax dipping of these bottle tops, a practice the firm usually reserved for its high-end vintage port.

Glenfiddich 1936 Peter J Russell

Glenfiddich was an early advocate of the single malt Scotch category, and its faith is rewarded today by being one of the best-selling Scotch brands in the world. It became the first distillery to market its single malt brand in 1963, and was the first to open its facility to visitors. Glenfiddich was an important trailblazer in the whisky industry, whose contribution cannot be forgotten. The scale of its operation today is a testament to this.

This is a spectacular example of one of the distillery's early single malts, bottled here especially for Peter J Russell & Co in Edinburgh.

Pre-war vintages in single malt are exceptionally rare, particularly from distilleries like Glenfiddich. This is a real opportunity to own a true piece of whisky history.

Longrow 1973 First Distillation - Last Cask

First distilled in 1973, Longrow is the peated single malt produced at Springbank distillery. Although very popular, Longrow remains an elusive whisky, with only 100-150 casks of it filled at the distillery each year. Early champions of this spirit included the legendary Italian bottler, Silvano Samaroli, who bought and bottled a number of famous casks from the inaugural vintage, and is credited by many with a good deal of the brand's success. It remains revered by connoisseurs to this day. ​​​​​​

This special release was bottled from cask #1723, the last to be filled during the inaugural year of production in 1973.