A rare bottle of Gordon & MacPhail’s Glen Grant 72-year-old whisky has broken its own previous auction world record in a sale at Bonham’s Hong Kong on 20 May.
The single bottle sold for HK$937,500 (US$120,000/£95,403) including buyer’s premium. This figure is more than double the price a bottle of the same whisky sold for at a Bonham’s Hong Kong sale in January 2021 (HK$421,600).
Distilled by Speyside producer Glen Grant in 1948, the rare single malt was created by independent Scotch bottler Gordon & MacPhail and investment specialist Premier Whisky.
It is the oldest Glen Grant whisky ever released to the market. Just 290 bottles were produced, each presented in a crystal-cut decanter.
The bottle was sold alongside a unique NFT artwork by political cartoonist Harry Harrison (pictured above). Known for his work in the South China Morning Post, Harrison created a sketch called ‘Year of the Dram 1948’ commemorating the year the whisky put into cask. The sale marks the first time Harrison’s work has been minted as an NFT.
‘A bottle of this incredibly rare whisky reached a world record price for this category at one of our auctions just over a year ago. With the one-off NFT attached, making it even more unique and collectible, we weren’t surprised to set a new world record price for this exceptional whisky,’ said Daniel Lam, director of fine wines and spirits at Bonham’s Hong Kong.
Bob McNab, MD of Premier Whisky added: ‘We knew from day one that we had picked a great whisky. Leading the team of experts choosing the cask, Charles MacLean could not have been more fulsome in its praise, so we are especially grateful to our friends at Gordon & MacPhail, the expert creators and custodians of this special cask all these years.
‘It only remained for us to give it the Premier Whisky star treatment commensurate with its quality and prestige – and of course, its inherent value.’
The NFT minted alongside the Glen Grant 72-year-old is the first project of Meta Malts. This newly formed Hong Kong company has ambitions to take the premium whisky market into the metaverse. It aims to create a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange for trading in rare whisky tokens.
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