A cask of whisky has sold for £16million to an anonymous female collector in Asia, setting a record for a single malt.
The price for the one-of-a-kind 1975 cask of Ardbeg Islay single malt Scotch is more than twice what the distillery’s owner Glenmorangie Co paid for the entire business in 1997.
The whisky company has been owned by French luxury goods giant LVMH since 2011.
The firm said “cask no.3” was the oldest-ever released by Ardbeg, adding it was “incomparably precious” since little single malt was produced at the distillery in the 1970s and it was closed through much of the 1980s and 1990s.
The spirit is said to contain notes of Brazil nuts in toffee, followed by linseed oil, a suggestion of flowering blackcurrants, sweet, aromatic peat smoke and a hint of tobacco.
The Press & Journal reports that under the terms of the sale, the new owner will receive 88 bottles from the cask each year over the next five years, with age profiles of 46, 47, 48, 49 and 50 years old.
Ardbeg’s director of whisky creation, Dr Bill Lumsden, married two casks distilled in 1975 into one, known as a butt, in 2014 to create a sherried, smoky taste.
Mr Lumsden, who will oversee the cask’s ongoing maturation, said: “Cask no. 3 is an extraordinary taste of Ardbeg’s past.
“Its aromas are nutty, herbal and smoky, while its tastes of tar, espresso coffee and spearmint have an astonishing finesse for a whisky of such age.
“So little stock survives from this era, that this cask really is one of a kind."