Who says bigger is always better?
Two miniature 50-milliliter bottles of rare Scotch broke auction records earlier this month, one of which fetched a staggering £7,360 (roughly $8,800). Online spirits auction site Whisky.Auction facilitated the sale of the miniatures, which were produced by the Springbank and (shuttered) Malt Mill distilleries.
Distilled in December 1919, a 50-year-old Springbank release landed the record-breaking sum. The single malt’s sale smashed a previous auction record for a miniature, £6,440 ($7,760), which was set by another 1919 Springbank in August 2021.
The other miniature from Malt Mill Distillery was produced in 1959 and aged for 10 years. This bottle contains an extremely rare spirit, distilled on the site of the current Lagavulin Distillery on the Scottish Island of Islay. A cask of the distillery’s whisky was featured in the 2012 whisky film “The Angels’ Share.”
Malt Mill produced peated whiskies between 1908 and 1962, and its distillates were only used in blends, adding to the rarity and value of the recently sold miniature.
Miniature bottles are especially popular at auctions, according to Whisky.Auction. Often, mini bottles may be viewed as “souvenir” items, meaning that the original purchasers might have often decided to keep the bottles rather than drink them. When larger bottles of distillery batches might be long gone already, mini versions withstand the test of time.
A certificate of authenticity accompanied the sale of the mini Springbank and Malt Milt.
While the auction sale of this liquor was impressive, it’s hardly the first Scottish whisky to make record-breaking news lately. Another bottle of Islay whiskey — created specifically for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Scottish Isle — recently sold for a record topping $105,000.
