Novelist Raymond Chandler once said, “There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren’t as good as others,” and boy was that ever the case for a British whiskey auctioning company that just made history by selling the most expensive cask of whiskey ever.
On Sunday evening, Whisky Hammer, a British-based whiskey auctioning company, sold a 374-liter cask of whiskey for £1,017,000 — $1,295,459.68 — that was originally distilled at The Macallan in 1988.
“To come across a cask of this age, quality and size is extraordinary in itself, enhanced by the fact the liquid was distilled at The Macallan which is reflected in the global attention the cask has attracted,” Daniel Milne, co-founder and managing director of Whisky Hammer, told The Daily Mail.
The cask was reportedly purchased and left at The Macallan Distillery for maturation. The buyer forgot about it for 30 years and decided to recently sell it at auction.
“When this cask was listed in our auction, we knew it had the potential to make history,” he added. “It’s been incredibly exciting for everyone at Whisky Hammer to have represented what has become the most expensive cask ever to be sold at auction.”
The liquor was reportedly purchased by a private individual in the United States.
While historic whiskey fetches a pretty penny at auction, pro-capitalism groups have argued in recent years that the drink should be known as “the spirit of the free market” as well.
In 2016, The Competitive Enterprise Institute released a documentary titled, “I, Whiskey,” which explained how the beverage was only made possible thanks to capitalism and the freedom to fail.
Former CEI president Lawson Bader told The Daily Caller in 2015 that the documentary was made after Milton Friedman’s iconic “I, Pencil,” which explained how the pencil was only made possible thanks to the innovative system of the free market.
“‘I, Pencil’ was much a clearer example of free enterprise, but alcohol is not a perfect example,” Bader said at the time. “It is a highly regulated product. Despite government attempts to squash it out, the drink survived through out the years because of human spirit that binds people and countries together.”
Whiskey, according to Bader, offers a perfect example to illustrate how capitalism is not merely about profits.
“The biggest misconception about the free market is that it is focused on solely monetary profit,” Bader told The Daily Caller. “Free enterprise is about choices, and experimenting, risking and benefiting from that risk through innovation.”
“It’s a voluntary system of exchange,” he added. “One person voluntarily hands something over, and another person takes something. It doesn’t have to be money either. You’re better off with the freedom to exchange. Heavy government regulation and involvement takes away our ability to choose, which damages the market and final product.”
Bader also explained that failure, and subsequent attempts at success, were necessary to create the actual taste of whiskey that drinkers experience in the modern world.
“Government regulation is essentially trying to protect against any risk at all, but there’s a grave danger in that. With whiskey, craftsmen failed numerous times, but human ingenuity preserved and created the tastes we have today. Failure rewards the individual because they can improve on their mistakes.”
If the individual purchaser of The Macallan 1988 were to share the taste of that cask by reselling it in smaller batches, it could yield 534 bottles of single malt whiskey at 70 centiliters a bottle, the Mail noted.
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Source: Dailywire
