What is the highest auction record for Karuizawa 50-year-old whisky?
Oh, speaking of Karuizawa 50-year-old, that's a legendary beast in the whisky collecting world.
The highest record at public auction currently is likely a bottle sold at Sotheby's in London in March 2020.
The hammer price was £363,000, which was equivalent to over HK$3.5 million at the time, and easily surpassed RMB 3 million. This price is astonishing, enough for a down payment on a small apartment in a tier-one city.
You might be curious why a single bottle of whisky can be so expensive. The reasons are actually quite simple:
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Discontinued/Extremely Rare: The Karuizawa distillery completely ceased operations around 2000 and no longer produces new whisky. Therefore, what's available on the market is all existing stock. Every bottle consumed means one less in existence, making it a "discontinued whisky."
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Extreme Rarity: The specific bottle that set this record is called "Karuizawa 1960 Single Cask #5627," one of the distillery's oldest vintages. Crucially, only 41 bottles were ever drawn from that single cask! Imagine, with only a few dozen bottles in the entire world, after years of consumption and collection, even fewer remain perfectly preserved and available for auction. The principle of "scarcity drives value" is perfectly exemplified here.
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High Market Demand: In recent years, Japanese whisky has seen an explosion in popularity on the global market. Karuizawa, as a legendary distillery that has ceased to exist, its high-aged expressions have naturally become one of the "holy grails" pursued by collectors and investors. Consequently, prices have soared.
Therefore, the value of this bottle goes beyond mere consumption; it's more about its scarcity, historical significance, and collectible value.