Collecting rare whisky: a £16m tipple served with froth

The market in rare whisky is looking very bubbly, says Chris Carter, with a 1975 cask of recently selling for £16m.

Ardbeg distillery, Islay
A cask of 1975 whisky from Ardbeg sold for £16m to a collector in Asia
(Image credit: © Simon Grosset / Alamy)

Earlier this month, a cask of 1975 whisky sold for £16m in a private sale to a collector in Asia. The single malt, known as Cask No 3, from the 207-year-old Ardbeg distillery on the island of Islay, sold for more than double the price that LVMH subsidiary Glenmorangie paid for Ardbeg and all of its stock in 1997, as Alice Lascelles and Oliver Barnes note in the Financial Times. For the next five years, 88 bottles, each worth £36,000, will be drawn from the cask every year and dispatched to Asia. “The sale,” says the paper, “represents a new high-water mark for the increasingly competitive market in rare whisky.”

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Chris Carter
Wealth Editor, MoneyWeek

Chris Carter spent three glorious years reading English literature on the beautiful Welsh coast at Aberystwyth University. Graduating in 2005, he left for the University of York to specialise in Renaissance literature for his MA, before returning to his native Twickenham, in southwest London. He joined a Richmond-based recruitment company, where he worked with several clients, including the Queen’s bank, Coutts, as well as the super luxury, Dorchester-owned Coworth Park country house hotel, near Ascot in Berkshire.

Then, in 2011, Chris joined MoneyWeek. Initially working as part of the website production team, Chris soon rose to the lofty heights of wealth editor, overseeing MoneyWeek’s Spending It lifestyle section. Chris travels the globe in pursuit of his work, soaking up the local culture and sampling the very finest in cuisine, hotels and resorts for the magazine’s discerning readership. He also enjoys writing his fortnightly page on collectables, delving into the fascinating world of auctions and art, classic cars, coins, watches, wine and whisky investing.

You can follow Chris on Instagram.