World’s Rarest Whiskey Collection, Including Two $2 Million Bottles, Slated For Auction Early Next Year

Richard Gooding had one of the most famous whisky collections in history. In fact, before passing away in 2014, he spent years at distilleries in Scotland and at auctions building his 3,900 bottle collection, including some of the rarest bottles in the world.

Two of those bottles could fetch $2 million at auction, according to Bloomberg. 

At the beginning of next year, his bottles will become the largest private whisky collection to ever hit the auction block. The collection includes extreme rarities from names like Macallan, Bowmore and Springbank.

Collectors continue to drive the prices of old, rare single malt scotch to record prices. Back in October, we noted that Sothby’s auctioned off 467 bottles owned by another American collector, including a 1926 Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Year Old, for $1.9 million. 

The Gooding collection will feature two such bottles of the same Macallans, one of which bears a label created by Italian pop art painter Valerio Adami. Only a dozen of the Adami bottles were made and one of them was destroyed in a 2011 earthquake in Japan. 

Becky Paskin, a scotch consultant and writer said: “The amount of people who have even tasted this whisky are few and far between, so to have two of these unicorn bottles in one auction is very exciting.”

The auction will be a proud moment for Iain McClune’s Whiskey Auctioneer, a company that was founded six years ago in a two-room basement office in Central Scotland. Earlier this year, WA auctioned a 50 year Yamazaki from Japan that fetched 160,500 pounds – a record for his firm that will soon be shattered.

In the upcoming auction, whiskey collectors will be focused on bottles from “lost” distilleries that stopped production long ago, like Dallas Dhu, a one time whiskey-maker in Speyside that closed in 1983. There will also be ample amounts of Bowmore, which was one of Gooding’s favorite whiskys. A 1964 Bowmore is expected to attract bids of 12,000 to 17,000 pounds and a 50 year old Springbank from 1919 is expected to bring in 180,000 to 220,000 pounds. 

 “Richard’s mission was to collect a bottle that represented every single distillery,” his wife, Nancy Gooding, concluded.