Sotheby’s of London is to host an auction of the world’s largest whisky collection by a single owner.
Online bids will be welcomed from September 27, with the live auction taking place October 24, at the Olympia in West Kensington, London. The collection is expected to raise in the region of £4m and is the most valuable ever to have been offered at auction.
The Ultimate Whisky Collection, as it is being billed, belongs to an unnamed American who was brought up in the UK, but is currently living back in America. The collection is made up of nine casks and 467 bottles spread over 394 lots. It contains a concentration of famous names such as The Macallan, Bowmore, and Highland Park. One of the bottles is a 60-year-old original label, The Macallan 1926, reported to be worth a staggering £350,000 to £450,000. Jonathan Read, a whisky specialist in the United States, helped him over the years to select the best whiskies for his collection.
The owner said of the collection that it had become a labour of love over the past two decades, but putting together this haul of whisky bottles was never something he set out to do. His initial reason for collecting them was down to their beautiful labels.
He goes on to describe how he was a wine collector first, but nowadays he loves to imbibe his favourite tipple every evening along with a cigar, and no doubt in his favourite engraved crystal whisky glass too.