The Macallan 1926 Sold for $2.7 Million. Here's Why It's the Most Expensive Whisky

Over the past 20 years, whiskey collecting has gotten more serious—evolving from a hobby for imbibers into a full fledged investment. 

At the center of that shift is The Macallan, which has become enshrined as the world’s most collectible whisky brand. “I could sell just Macallan and nothing else,” says Jonny Fowle, Vice President and Global head of Whisky for Sotheby’s. 

But of all The Macallan whiskies, none is more valuable or coveted than the 1926 vintage. It broke a world record when a bottle sold for more than $2.7 million dollars in 2023. It beat the previous record of $1.9 million that was set by a different bottle of the same vintage of The Macallan in 2019. Fowle personally handled these two record-breaking auctions.

“We’ve sold two bottles since I’ve been at Sotheby’s, and both times I’ve ended up on the front page of the newspaper,” he sats. “This thing has more power and weight than anything else in whisky.”

So, what makes the 1926 whisky so special? For starters, it's the oldest vintage the brand has ever released. It also comes from a very historic period. “The 1926 is unrepeatable,” says Fowle, “between two World Wars, in a very different time.” 

I visited The Macallan this year on the 100-year anniversary — to the day — of when the distillery’s then custodian Janet “Nettie” Harbison laid down cask #263 in a warehouse on a cold February day in 1926. The barrel had previously held sherry before being filled with spirit. There it aged patiently for the next sixty years. Finally in 1986, at its apex of maturation, cask #263 was finally selected for bottling by Nettie’s great-nephew, Allan Shiach. The result was 40 bottles of what was then the oldest whisky Macallan had ever bottled. 

The original price was £5,000; a far cry from the millions it would later command, but at the time it was very high and one of the oldest whiskies to be released by any Scotch distillery. And it was also one of the first times a whisky brand collaborated with artists to design the label. Artists Sir Peter Blake, Valerio Adami, and Michael Dillon each created their own original label designs for the 1926 vintage. 

“The 1926 is super dark, a vintage statement, and all the hallmarks of a collectible whisky,” says Fowle, but it’s also more than that. It was released in what Fowle calls a “pre- collectible” whisky market. In fact, in 1986 the Scotch industry was just holding on, so at the time this expression was a pretty bold attempt to attract wine collectors and other high-end buyers. So as a result, the whisky transcends the scope of the normal whisky world and is well known in the greater luxury collectors market. “It has its own life and trajectory, and the whisky market can be doing whatever the whisky market does, but the 1926 will always be extremely elusive.”

Most people would assume that anyone paying nearly $3 million dollars for a bottle of whisky plan to keep it sealed and under lock and key, but Fowle’s position at Sotheby’s gives him a unique perspective on the kinds of clients who buy whisky at this level. “Don’t underestimate the ability of someone buying this to open and drink it,” he says with a smirk. “People are rich.”

Despite the fame of the 1926, if you ask about it at The Macallan distillery, there’s far more focus on the legacy that it represents than the notoriety it has garnered.  “Nettie Harbison was a real person a hundred years ago who rolled that cask into a warehouse,” says Euan Kennedy, Lead Whisky Maker for The Macallan. He considers her among the people who set the standards for craftsmanship and creativity that still defines The Macallan. 

“The 1926 encapsulates that sense of craftsmanship and creativity that we try to continue today,” says Kennedy. But he’s quick to add, “that level of attention we put into any rare single cask that only a small group of people may ever have access to, we put the same care and attention into every whisky that we make.” 

After all, you never know which cask may become something truly great a century from now. “Whisky is a time capsule,” says Kennedy. “It has an ability to be a moment in time, so our job is making the whiskies of tomorrow, whether that means twelve years or a hundred years down the line.”