Bottle of The Macallan 1926 Sells for £2.1 Million / $2.8 Million

A bottle of The Macallan 1926, featuring the Fine & Rare label, sold for £2,125,000 / $2,807,975, becoming the second most valuable bottle of whisky ever sold in sterling, but the most valuable bottle ever sold at auction when measured in US dollars. Sotheby’s now holds the top three prices for any bottle of whisky sold at auction.

 Jonny Fowle, Global Head of Whisky & Spirits, Sotheby's, said: “Today’s result reflects the enduring fascination that The Macallan 1926 inspires among collectors around the world. More than a century after it was distilled, it continues to stand alone as the benchmark for rarity, provenance and desirability in whisky. Achieving the second-highest price ever paid for a bottle of whisky at auction, and setting a new record for a Fine & Rare bottling, at the first auction held at The Macallan Estate during the centenary year of the vintage itself, is a remarkable milestone in the history of whisky collecting.”

Bottled in 1986 at 60 Years Old, the fabled 1926 vintage has long been the benchmark for collectible whisky, its extraordinary value driven as much by its rarity as by its enduring place in the history of Scotch whisky collecting. 

After maturing for six decades, just 40 bottles of The Macallan 1926 were drawn from a single sherry seasoned oak cask (cask number 263) in 1986, representing the oldest vintage ever bottled by The Macallan. A maximum of 14 were decorated with the Fine and Rare label, 12 were designed by Sir Peter Blake, and a further 12 by Italian artist Valerio Adami. Two bottles were left unlabelled – one was later hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon (the first bottle of whisky to surpass £1 million when sold in 2018; the other is the last unlabelled Macallan 1926 in existence.

 The Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Years Old 1926 is one of 14 bottles released in 2002 which became the foundation of The Macallan’s iconic Fine & Rare collection. This was the first of these celebrated 1926 vintage bottlings to return to auction since 2023, and the first Fine & Rare example to appear at auction since 2019, when Sotheby’s in London set a then world auction record of £1.5 million / $1.9 million. The £2.1 million achieved today establishes a new auction record for a bottle of The Macallan 1926 Fine & Rare. In US dollar terms, the result exceeds the previous record set seven years ago by almost 50%, an increase of approximately $900,000.