By Richard Thomas
The world’s costliest whisky can also be the oldest ever from Japan: Yamazaki 55
(Credit score: Beam-Suntory)
As American lovers are left scratching their heads over precisely why even Sazerac Rye is so scarce that it’s now saved in locked cupboards on the liquor retailer, retail costs for restricted version whiskeys that ought to be scarce proceed to spiral. Leaving inflation out of it, the type of bourbon one would trot out for Vacation company is now priced between $200 and $500 as a matter of routine.
Even so, one want solely take a look at the costs fetched by overseas bottles labeled “whisky” as a substitute of “whiskey” to grasp that American the stuff remains to be comparatively low cost. So it was when we first checked out this topic six years in the past, and the marketplace for Scotch and Japanese whiskies has soared into the stratosphere since. For comparability, as I write this the most costly retail worth listed for an American whiskey is the $40,000 being requested for a bottle of Willet Single Barrel 22 Yr Previous Rye. Examine that to the Scotch whisky listed on the backside of this High Ten.
Right here I’ll concentrate on objects and costs listed for retail, not the typically insane costs commanded at public sale. Additionally, I’m wanting solely at particular person bottles, and excluding collections. Wine Searcher is a wonderful, free supply of data with reference to market worth, or the precise costs being charged by retailers.
The World’s Ten Most Costly Whiskies:
The Yamazaki 55 Yr Previous: $881,682
The Macallan Lalique 50 Yr Previous: $257,712
The Macallan Lalique 55 Yr Previous: $165,440
The Macallan Lalique 62 Yr Previous: $165,275
The Macallan ‘Tales of The Macallan Quantity I’ 71 Yr Previous : $142,730
Bowmore Aston Martin Black Bowmore DB5: $126,637
The Macallan Lalique 72 Yr Previous: $130,748
The Macallan Crimson Assortment 78 Yr Previous: $122,255
The Macallan 50 Yr Previous: $118,761
The Macallan Lalique VI 65 Yr Previous: $107,435
What has modified since 2016. The primary salient truth is that an ultra-aged, Japanese whisky sits on the high of the record: Yamazaki 55 Yr Previous, with a retail worth approaching the a million greenback mark. The listed retail worth is thrice better than the runner-up. Launched in 2020 in a run of merely 100 bottles, that is the oldest whisky ever launched by Suntory, and is mostly billed because the oldest Japanese whisky (of any supply) up to now.
The Macallan in Lalique 72 yr Previous Single Malt
(Credit score: Edrington)
One other factor that has modified is the value vary represented general. Even excluding the Yamazaki 55, I used to be not exaggerating earlier after I used the time period “stratosphere.” The costliest whisky on the record in 2016 was The Macallan Lalique 50 Yr Previous at $69,298; that bottle now instructions $257, 712. Moreover, the most costly whisky in 2016 held a price ticket that lags some 40 grand behind what the most cost effective whisky on this record instructions.
After all, The Macallan–and their Lalique sequence particularly–continues to dominate the High Ten. Curiously, of the three bottles not named Macallan that made it into the High Ten again then, just one even cracks the High Twenty-5 immediately: The Balvenie 50 Yr Previous, which now instructions $42,753, up from $34,044. It’s value remembering that in a listing dominated by The Macallan, even retail costs are pushed to a big extent by the sacks of money fetched at public sale. The Balvenie 50 Yr Previous, nonetheless, just isn’t so commonly seen at public sale, so it’s worth enhance might be a greater reflection of retail realities.
