The first of Sotheby Hong Kong’s wine auctions of 2018 have started the year off with one hell of a bar to raise. At the private auction over the weekend, one 50-year-old bottle of Yamazaki Single Malt sold for a stupidly excessive price of $2,337,000 HKD, that’s over $370,000 Aussie dollars.
The rare drop destroyed its expected auction ceiling of $1,100,000 HKD, breaking the record for the highest-recorded sale price of Japanese Whisky. This particular bottle of Yamazaki from the House of Suntory was released in a limited run back in 2011 and sports a handcrafted wooden case.
Purchased anonymously, the whisky topped out the auction, beating a dozen bottles of Richebourg 1976 Henri Jayer which sold for $1,476,000 HKD ($234,000 AUD).