Gordon & MacPhail’s Glen Grant 72yr old is being heralded by the world’s leading whisky experts as one of the greatest and most historically significant whiskies ever produced.
From a run of only 290 bottles produced, the final allocation of 50 bottles will be made available after Chinese New Year (Feb 1-3) at a price of GBP50,000 per bottle.
For serious drinkers, connoisseurs or investors looking for the Holy Grail of beautifully aged rare whisky, securing a bottle for their collection is a must.
Recorded in the Top#5 Oldest Whiskies globally, this remarkable 1948 cask was deemed by the world’s most influential whisky guide, Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2022, to be truly outstanding. He gave it an astonishing 97.5/100.
As well as being named the World’s Finest Single Cask, it has also picked up the highly prestigious title of “Scottish Single Malt Whisky of the Year – 2022”.
The score equals the highest-ever awarded in Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible, which has now been published each year for the last 19 years, with over 20,000 whiskies tasted by Mr Murray during that time.
“This whisky has had 72 years for something to go wrong with it. Instead, we have the near-miraculous situation of a whisky sitting for 72 years in oak and everything going right with it. The chances for a whisky to reach this type of antiquity and hit this level of excellence is mind-blowing: it has to be one-in-a-million or more,” says Jim Murray.
The market has received the 72yr old equally well, said Nicholas Breton, Founder of Premier Whisky and the mastermind behind this production.
“As expected, January’s pre-order sales of 100 bottles have been unparalleled. With pre-sales due to close in the coming days, collectors are scrambling to secure a pre-order allocation before prices rise upon the release of the final bottles in February.”
“I am completely blown away! This is altogether an amazing and hugely rewarding whisky. Although I have rarely encountered whiskies of such advanced age, I am generally sceptical about very old malts–they lose vitality and tend to become fragile and flat, generally owing to low strength. Not in this case! I can honestly say this is one of the finest malts it has ever been my pleasure to taste in forty years of professional exploration,” says Charles MacLean MBE, Master of the Quaich, Scotland’s leading whisky writer.
Presented in a beautiful hand-cut crystal decanter, the finished product is a Premier Whisky masterpiece. A total of 200 bottles have sold before the whisky hit the shelves, which is a good indicator of massive demand. Market expectations are that prices may reach more than GBP100,000 per bottle once the final allocation is diminished and this is traded in the secondary market.
“We knew from day one that we had picked a great whisky. Leading the team of experts choosing the cask, Charles MacLean could not have been more fulsome in its praise, so we are especially grateful to our friends at Gordon & MacPhail, the expert creators and custodians of this special cask all these years. It only remained for us to give it the Premier Whisky star treatment commensurate with its quality and prestige—and of course, its inherent value,” says Bob McNab, Managing Director of Premier Whisky.
“These latest awards round off an excellent year for us, which has seen our projects break two world records at auction at Bonhams, Hong Kong in 2021.”