Highland Bling: the $1.5 Million Whisky Collection

It might have been more traditional to commission an artist to paint a set of portraits. Instead, Richard Paterson, master distiller of the legendary Dalmorein the northern highlands, has raided “the incredibly rare and valuable stocks that we nurture up in Alness” to create 12 unique bottles of whisky, each of which is named for one of the people who have influenced him throughout his career.

“The Dalmore Paterson Collection” – which has just gone on display in the Fine Spirits Room at Harrods – is for sale as a single lot, but if you need to ask the price you certainly can’t afford it: it’s a staggering £987,500.

The oldest whisky in the collection is a vintage, from 1926, dedicated to Alexander Matheson, the founder of the Dalmore distillery. John Macdonald, a former manager, is celebrated with a blend of whiskies from the 1970s while (James) Whyte and (Charles) Mackay, founders of The Dalmore’s parent company, are remembered with the no11, a whisky matured in two distinctive styles of cask.

The package is reminiscent of a stunt pulled by the Australian wine producer Penfoldswho made headlines last year by launching 12 £100,000 “ampoules” – bottles of wine for which they felt able to charge a small fortune largely on account of the artistry of the packaging.

You can’t pick up the whiskies in The Dalmore Paterson Collection elsewhere for less money, but they have gone to town on presentation.

This collection comes with its own bespoke cabinet, with each whisky bottled in a lead crystal decanter finished with hand-engraved silver. Whoever buys it is invited to spend more time reading about each expression than they do drinking it: it comes with a hand-written ledger, bound in calfskin, spanning more than 200 pages, that took over 1000 hours to write and which apparently “captures Richard’s every thought and step on the way to creating the collection”.

Crikey. Every thought and step? Paterson is a hallowed figure in whisky, and his father and grandfather were distillers before him, but even so, could that perhaps have benefited from a bit of editing?

Bruce Langlands, director of food at Harrods, puts it another way: “It represents the lifetime’s work of one of the whisky industry’s most dedicated, respected and loved characters. Whoever buys this will own a truly unique collection of whiskies as well as a little bit of Richard himself, as he has put so much into its creation.”

Via: The Telegraph