World’s Most Valuable Whisky Leads Sotheby’s Sale at The Macallan Estate

Scheduled for 9 October 2026 and expected to attract the world’s most dedicated whisky collectors, the sale will comprise whiskies from The Macallan drawn almost exclusively from private collections. Conceived to mark the centenary of the distillation of The Macallan 1926, the auction will bring together a selection of the brand’s finest and most sought-after single malts, spanning decades.

Leading the sale is a bottle of The Macallan 1926 – an expression that has come to define whisky at its most rarefied. Bottled in 1986 as a 60 Years Old, it has become 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 other is the last unlabelled Macallan 1926 in existence. 

The bottle to be offered by Sotheby’s this October is The Macallan Fine and Rare 60 Years Old 1926, one of the 14 bottles initially released in 2002 which became the anchor for The Macallan’s iconic ‘Fine and Rare’ series. The appearance of any of these 1926 bottles at auction over the years has resulted in extraordinary results, setting successive auction records. This is the first of these famed 1926 vintage bottles to return to auction since the record for any bottle of whisky was set at Sotheby’s in London in 2023 with The Macallan Adami 1926, which sold for £2.2 million ($2.7 million). 

Carrying an estimate of £1.7-2.2 million, The Macallan Fine and Rare 60 Years Old 1926 is poised to become one of the most valuable bottles of whisky ever sold.