Is this bottle of Gordon & MacPhail Mortlach 1949 51 Year Old single malt worth the price?

OK as ive shared before I’m on " the whisky shop"'s e-mail list and a lot of it is fascinating just to read some of the stories behind the makers and the process they use to make it and such

But they have a small list for " obsessed people with too much money" aka “serious collectors”

Here,s the latest addition to that list :

as of now, 3,999 pounds sterling is 5498.23 in us dollars …
Other than a desire to sip some 50-year-old scotch out of curiosity what makes it worth that much >

Investment. The hope that in the future some fool with even more money will wander by.

Every year it sits in a barrel some leaks out (angel’s share) so the longer it sits the less there is of it. After 51 years the makers are taking a serious dent out of the number of bottles they can fill, so those bottles are going to cost more.

And if there are fewer of them, demand goes up (if it’s something desirable) which also drives up the cost.

Also that.

Also, it’s possible they don’t actually sell any of those bottles at that price. It’s only ‘worth’ that much if somebody is willing to pay for it.

I’d say because it spent 50 years in the barrel and not just in the bottle makes it much more expensive to produce and thus commands a higher price. Inflation alone accounts for some of the price, $100 in 1949 is worth $1,150. Add in rarity and profit gets you to close to the number being asked. It’s marketed for rich people, so it seems to be fairly priced for its intended consumer. If I’m sitting in my $5 million dollar mansions sipping room I’d expect to have a bottle like this around.

thanks… another question is would be worth drinking at any price ?

No, but that’s not the point. Supply and demand dictates price, there is a point where its marginal value declines and becomes foolish. Scotch is meant to be sipped by people who can afford it. If it cost $5 million for a bottle it might as well sit in a museum.

Been there, it’s a cool place and I recieved a dipolma in how to properly sip scotch whiskey.

I have this funny mental picture of someone cleaning out a long neglected storage space and coming across the barrel thinking " what the hell ? " and then after much looking through dusty and faded inventory sheets saying " oh that’s where great granddad put that cask that was supposed to go to the Christmas party back in 49 … family mystery solved

Meaning whether it’s still even good to drink, most likely, yes. I watched a segment on the CBS Sunday Morning Show a couple years ago about “the allure of vintage spirits”. Apparently it’s a thing where people like to collect and drink old liquor. from the segment:

At The Office, a high-end “speakeasy” in Manhattan, Mark Dipasquale can make you a pre-Prohibition martini using Vermouth from 1906, and gin from the turn of the century. It will set you back $600.

“The gin is really cool, the vermouth is really interesting,” said Dipasquale. But, he adds, the most interesting is the martini’s bitters, dating from 1896 or before. “If you take a sip of it, and coat your mouth with it, it has a life to it that modern spirits don’t,” he said.

I think that whole “life to it that modern spirits don’t” stuff is just imagination. Spirits do not age in the bottle the way they do in casks, getting better with age. Also, I don’t imagine they were made better back then, though maybe that’s possible. But if a liquor is kept under the right conditions it can stay drinkable for a long time.

My wife and I visited there some years ago when we stayed in Edinburgh. It was pretty cool.

That said, while I enjoy scotch, it’s not clear to me how a $5000 bottle would taste orders of magnitude better than a glass of Macallan 12.

That’s close to the almost-certainly apocryphal story of the origin of bourbon whiskey - a farmer in Kentucky casked up a few barrels of moonshine, buried them under his barn, and promptly forgot about them.

Ten years later, lightning strikes the barn and burns it down. While digging the foundation for the new barn, he finds the whiskey, discovers that the charred barrels have imparted a brown color and smooth flavor, and names the new spirit after his Bourbon County home.

Somehow, I hadn’t thought to ask that question. Putting liquor in barrels makes sense, but why would anybody think to burn the inside of the barrel first?

I visited the Glenmorangie distillery north of Edinburgh and they had barrels that were being prepared for the Queens Jubilee that were 50 years old. Scotch Whiskey has been around for hundreds of years so they have tried many things. This particular distillery bought Jack Daniels barrels and reused them. Also they bought used wine barrels and reused them. Makes you wonder what other things they may have tried that didn’t turn out so well, like lets pee in the barrel and see what happens!

Hardly speaking from experience here, but the taste is only a small element of the value of actually drinking your £4K whisky. For a certain kind of person, there is enormous value to be had from opening and drinking the bottle and that value consists in the performative aspect. Simply by cracking the seal and taking the first sip, our millionaire is convincingly making at least one of the following statements:

  • I am rich enough to drink this ludicrously expensive whisky as if it were 12 year old Macallan
  • I am a connoisseur
  • I know how to live well
  • I am rich but I’m not obsessed by money

If they’re sharing it out, they also get to imply that

  • I value my friends/this business deal/the continued good relationship between our criminal organisations really highly.

Getting to publicly and convincingly make these statements - or even making them privately to oneself - may well be worth the opportunity cost of selling the bottle on at a later date.

A $2000 bottle of Macallan 25 doesn’t taste orders of magnitude better than a Macallan 12. I’ve had it (I wasn’t paying) and it was somewhat more nuanced (also smoother on the palate), but it wasn’t mind-blowing in any way. My guess is that this bottle would taste pretty good, perhaps even $300 a bottle good, but that’s not the purpose.

Not only is it not the purpose, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody defend super-high prices by saying, “Seriously, this is sooooooo delicious.”

So, nobody even claims that to the the purpose.

Straight from the reviews (typos included) from verified purchasers of Macallan 25:

Deep rich and flavorfull. Worth every penny.

Its one of the best 25 Yrs Single malt even tested and the best among all Mc Callan tried before. Worth it

I stand corrected.

I always heard that the longer it was barreled the less of a hangover it gave you the next day. Not sure if that is backed up by studies but it is one thing I’ve heard justifying aged spirits. I for one would sign up for such a study. :slight_smile:

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hell heres one for the books :