Last Chance to See: The Million Dollar Malt

© Suntory
| A single bottle sold at auction for more than 12 times the release price.

We’re all about free trade and the open market here at Wine-Searcher, but even we blinked a little when we saw our first-ever million-dollar bottle.

Curiously, it wasn’t a storied Burgundy Grand Cru or ancient Bordeaux that first hit the million-dollar mark, instead it was a single-malt whisky from Japan: the Yamazaki 55 Year Old.

You’ll notice, if you click on the link above, that it is no longer in seven-figure territory, but it when it first hit the global retail trade, it most certainly was. It peaked in October 2020 at a global average price of $1,019,886, which is the sort of money you’d normally associate with a West Village apartment rather than a 750-ml bottle of what is effectively distilled beer.

Even today, it is still streets ahead as the most expensive single bottle of anything on Wine-Searcher.

We do crazy prices here, there’s no denying that; we’re looking at a world where a single bottle of wine can have a $41,000 average price tag and still be in desperately short supply, after all. But the sheer weight of the Yamazaki’s average price is just unbearable.

The nearest wine price to that is for a multi-vintage vertical collection of Château Lafite Rothschild that was available in 2013 for the comparative bargain average price of $185,842 – but it’s worth noting that price was for 36 bottles, rather than just one. The most expensive average price for a single “bottle” of wine was just shy of $180,000 that the Penfolds Bin 42 Kalimna Cabernet Ampoule reached in December 2018.

Spirit prices do tend to be higher. Not only is it a more expensive process to make and age spirits, but they can be produced in relatively tiny quantities, therefore ensuring the vital element of rarity. They also last effectively forever, unlike wine, meaning they have an open-ended drinking window.

That would explain why all the other average price heavy hitters are spirits – and mostly whiskeys. Bowmore 1957 Single Malt hit a global average per-bottle price of $711,085 in February 2020, while Yamazaki’s 50-year-old bottling made it to $703,136 in April this year. Macallan’s Red Collection 60-year-old hit $556,096 – also in April this year – but no others have made it north of the $300K mark based on global average price (although we did once have a single one-off offer for Hennessy Beaute de Siecle at $340,249 back in 2014).

Special distillery

Interest in Japanese whisky – and, inevitably, the price – has grown considerably in recent years, and Yamazaki has been leading the charge. What makes it so special?

Well, the distillery has a pretty spectacular story behind it, and the whisky is something special, too. The 55 is a combination of two whiskies: 1960-vintage spirit distilled under the watchful eye of distillery founder Shinjiro Torii and aged in a mizunara cask, and whisky filled into white oak casks in 1964, the year his son, second-generation master blender Keizo Saji succeeded him, and their company, Kotobukiya, was renamed Suntory.

It was first given a limited release in Japan, at an initial price of around $60,000; within months a bottle had been onsold at auction for $795,000. A mere 100 bottles were then released to the wider world – again at around $60,000 – and prices promptly went nuts.

It first surfaced on Wine-Searcher in September 2020, with a global average price of $1,017,000 and, while that price has dipped a bit, it is still sitting north of $900,000. And forgive us for even suggesting the word “bargain” in an article about a million-dollar bottle, but looking at the offers we currently have, you don’t have to spend that much.  

We have three offers for less than $800,000, with 1 West Dupont Circle Wines & Liquors in Washington DC leading the field, listing it at $699,000 – almost quarter of a million bucks below the global average.

Supply is getting tighter, however. In February this year, there were 18 offers. Now there are just 11, so it might be a question of getting in quickly or maybe putting off buying that matching Porsche 918 Spyder for your partner. If you do get your hands on a bottle, let me know; I’ll come round and bring nibbles.