Buyer of World's Largest Bottle of Whisky Revealed

UPDATE Aug 31, 2023 9:30 AM CDT

The owner of the most expensive whisky cask sold at auction has been revealed as a Vietnamese man with a spirits collection valued at $190 million. Viet Nguyen Dinh Tuan, who paid nearly $1.2 million for the cask of 32-year-old Macallan single malt whisky, bottled in a 311-liter vessel standing at 5 feet, 11 inches, added it to his collection in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday, along with a Guinness World Records certificate confirming it as the world's largest whisky bottle, per the Guardian. Viet also owns the largest bottle of cognac, the oldest bottle of whisky, and the world's only complete Macallan Fine & Rare Collection, per Sky News. "He is preserving whisky history," says Daniel Monk of Cask World, who arranged the auction, per the Guardian.

Apr 26, 2022 9:40 AM CDT

One very lucky (and apparently wealthy) Macallan fan now has enough of their favorite whisky to share with at least 500 friends, after scooping up a cask of it for nearly $1.2 million—the most expensive cask ever sold at auction. Per CTV News, a 100-gallon barrel of the renowned spirits was whipped up by the Scottish distillery in 1988, and some guy reported to be an expatriate bought it up for about $6,300. You'd think one wouldn't forget about such a purchase, but the buyer apparently had other stuff on his mind for the past three decades, as he didn't remember to come for it until the distillery recently sent out a reminder that the cask was still sitting around in one of its warehouses.

That owner apparently didn't feel like holding onto his liquor after so many years, and so put it up for grabs, in an online sale at Whisky Hammer that ended Sunday. "When this cask was listed ... we knew it had the potential to make history," the site's co-founder, Daniel Milne, tells the BBC. He adds, per the Robb Report: "Casks of this age and size are extremely rare, especially from The Macallan." The barrel is said to have enough liquid courage in it to fill 534 700-milliliter bottles.

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The previous record for a whisky cask sold at auction, another Macallan barrel in 2021, was around $560,000. The only word on the buyer of the recent Macallan whisky—said in its tasting notes to have a "slightly nutty mouthfeel," with "waves of sweetness" and hints of "oak, leather, and spices," including "nutmeg, ginger, and ground coriander, over a wash of ginger perkin biscuits, soft buttery dates, and freshly baked apricot Danish pastries," per CTV—is that it's a private person based in the United States. (More whisky stories.)