Bonhams sells another 60yo Macallan for £615,000

A bottle of The Macallan Peter Blake 1926 60-year-old Scotch whisky fetched £615,063 (US$808,091) when it went under the hammer at a Bonhams auction in Edinburgh this week.

The Macallan Peter Blake 1926 60-year-old sold for more than £615,000 at auction

The rare bottle had been estimated to sell for between £500,000 (US$645,800) and £700,000 (US$904,120). It had been put up for sale by a UK collector who purchased the bottle when it was released in 1986.

Only 40 bottles of The Macallan 1926 were released in 1986 following a 60-year maturation period in Sherry casks, each with a £20,000 price tag.

Out of the 40, 12 bottles were given to British pop artist Sir Peter Blake to design, with another 12 handed to artist Valerio Adami, and one bottle hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon – which became the first whisky to sell for more than £1 million last year.

Martin Green, Bonhams whisky specialist in Edinburgh, said: “Only 12 bottles of The Macallan 60-year-old 1926 were issued with the label designed by Sir Peter Blake, who is known throughout the world for co-creating the cover for the Beatles 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

“It is very exciting to have sold one of these incredibly rare bottles here in Scotland for such a very high price.”

The highest price paid for a bottle from the Blake series happened in May 2018 when a bottle was bought for £751,703 (US$970,900) at a Bonhams auction in Hong Kong.

Other highlights from the most recent Bonhams sale in Edinburgh include a 50-year-old Dalmore 1926, which beat its £15,000-£20,000 (US$19,700-US$26,275) estimate with a closing sale of £27,563 (US$36,213).

A Springbank 1952 also sold for £18,813 (US$24,716). In total, the Bonhams Whisky Sale made more than £900,000 (US$1.18m).