Home Culture Fancy a £7,500 bottle of whisky for just £99? Here is what...

Fancy a £7,500 bottle of whisky for just £99? Here is what you have to do….

September 16, 2019 2:45 pm

In celebration of its 20^th anniversary, leading global retailer of fine whiskies and spirits, The Whisky Exchange, is offering one really rare bottle of Ardbeg single malt whisky, worth £7,500, for just £99 – its original selling price when released exclusively at the distillery on Islay in 1999.

Illustrating the meteoric rise in the value of rare and collectable whisky, this is a unique opportunity for one whisky lover to purchase a rare bottle released 20 years ago, to much acclaim at the time, for a fraction of its current value. The bottle has gone on sale via ballot today on The Whisky Exchange website. You can enter the ballot now here until Sunday 22 September 2019.

The Ardbeg ‘Manager’s Choice’ bottling is a single sherry cask from 1976 selected by the then distillery manager Stuart Thomson for sale at the distillery in 1999, the same year that The Whisky Exchange started life as an online retailer. An enormous hit at the time, this was one of the key early single cask bottlings that kickstarted Ardbeg’s stratospheric rise.

Sukhinder Singh, co-founder and owner of The Whisky Exchange, believes this is a very special bottle for the lucky owner. “Obviously this bottling means a lot to me given the time of its release at the very beginning of The Whisky Exchange, but it’s also now a very rare bottle indeed and an absolute must among any Ardbeg collection. Islay single malts aged in sherry casks are rare because very often it simply does not work, but when it does the result is magical, and believe me this one works. It’s a whole different dimension of whisky experience and is worth opening because the buyer is in for a treat.”

Singh also believes this bottle is a prime example of the incredible rise in interest and demand for old and rare whisky. “Over the 20 years we’ve been in business, we have seen demand for old and rare whisky continue to grow year on year and we don’t anticipate this changing. The market for collecting and investing in whisky is ever-increasing, taking prices up, and for the extra special bottles like this one, it’s just the beginning. This is our way of saying a huge thank you to everyone who’s supported the business over the last 20 years.”