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Warehouse of a Scottish distillery with numerous whiskey casks
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ANDY BUCHANAN/ AFP
A cask of rare Scottish whiskey has set a new world record: the cask was sold to a private collector in Asia for 16 million pounds, the equivalent of around 18.9 million euros.
This is reported by the British daily newspaper »Guardian« with reference to the »Financial Times«.
The keg thus broke the previous record of £1 million set in April this year.
The whiskey, dubbed Cask No 3, is said to date from November 1975 and was made at the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery on the Scottish island of Islay.
It sold for more than double the price the entire distillery and inventory was purchased for in 1997.
Only a few barrels from the 70s left
Whiskey author and expert Charles MacLean called the £16million cask "a remarkable piece of liquid history".
Bill Lumsden, Head of Distillation and Whiskey Creation at Ardbeg, said: "I've only tasted a whiskey like this two or three times in my career." It has an emotional, soothing quality that is difficult to put into words.
Overall, the casks from the 1970s that are still in the distillery's warehouses "can be counted on a couple of hands," says Lumsden.
Most of the whiskey from this period was processed into blends, so single malts were therefore rare.
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