stockholm beer and whisky festival

$6,000 Sample of World's Oldest Whisky Goes Missing

Filed under: Spirits, Crimes and Misdemeanors

Ordinarily, the idea of a 200 ml sample bottle of scotch disappearing would hardly be news-worthy. But this, as you might have surmised, is no ordinary scotch. What we're dealing with here is a 70-year old malt from the obscure Mortlach distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, presented by the independent bottlers at Gordon & MacPhail.

Naturally at that age – reportedly the oldest ever bottled – the rare single malt wasn't bottled in great quantities, and sold at a justifiably elevated price. The few 700 ml decanters offered sold at £10,000 apiece – on par with The Dalmore Sirius 58yo and the Highland Park 50yo – and a limited quantity of 200 ml bottles were sold at £2,500, promptly skyrocketing in value on the open market to around $6,000.

The Swedish importer Symposion International was allocated two of the former and three of the later. They were displayed at the recent Stockholm Beer & Whisky festival, where one of the smaller bottles went missing. The distributor has appealed to the press (that's us!) to help track down the rare bottle by publicizing the details of its disappearance: it went missing after the conclusion of the show, leading Symposion to surmise that whoever took it knew what s/he was looking for and had good knowledge of the exposition center where it was held. Although the presentation box was taken with the sample, the back of the case was left behind along with the packaging that went around it. Have any tips as to its whereabouts? Contact Symposion International.

Tags: generations, gordon and macphail, gordon macphail, mortlach, stockholm beer and whisky festival, symposion, symposion international