A Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 Bottle Sold for £2.125 Million at Sotheby’s

A bottle of The Macallan Fine & Rare 1926 sold for £2.125 million, or about $2,807,905, at a Sotheby’s auction held at The Macallan Estate in Scotland, setting a new auction record for the Fine & Rare version of the 1926 whisky and showing how exchange rates are affecting headline rankings in the global collectibles market.

The sale took place on October 9 at Sotheby’s “Live from The Macallan Estate” auction, an event staged to mark 100 years since the spirit was distilled. The result was reported on October 10 by WhiskyCast. Sotheby’s public lot page confirms the bottle, the date and a pre-sale estimate of £1.7 million to £2.2 million, though the final result is not visible without a login.

By sterling value, the bottle ranks as the second-highest priced whisky ever sold at auction, behind another Macallan 1926 bottle, the Valerio Adami version, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2023 for £2.1875 million. The new sale fell £62,500 short of that mark, a gap of 2.9%.

In U.S. dollar terms, however, the 2026 sale moved ahead. WhiskyCast reported the 2023 Adami sale at $2,714,250, meaning the Fine & Rare bottle sold this month exceeded that figure by about $93,655, or 3.5%. The difference does not come from a higher sterling price. It comes from the change in the pound-dollar exchange rate between the two sales.

The result also surpassed the previous auction record for a Fine & Rare 1926 by a wide margin. Sotheby’s sold a Fine & Rare example in 2019 for £1.5 million. The new price is £625,000 higher, an increase of 41.7%.

The bottle sold this month was described by Sotheby’s as The Macallan Fine & Rare 60 Year Old, 42.6 ABV, from cask No. 263. It was distilled in 1926 and bottled in 1986 after six decades in sherry casks. Sotheby’s said just 40 bottle equivalents were produced from the vintage, and only 14 were originally released with Fine & Rare labels.

That small group is part of what has made the 1926 vintage one of the most closely watched names in high-end whisky auctions. According to Sotheby’s, the 40 bottles from the 1986 bottling were split into several versions. Fourteen were labeled Fine & Rare. Twelve received labels designed by Sir Peter Blake. Another 12 later received labels by Italian artist Valerio Adami. Two bottles were left unlabeled, and one of those was later hand-painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon.

Over the past several years, different versions of the 1926 vintage have repeatedly reset auction records. Sotheby’s said all four major variants broke the overall whisky auction record between 2018 and 2023. The Michael Dillon bottle became the first whisky to pass £1 million when it sold in 2018. Sotheby’s also said one Adami bottle is believed to have been destroyed in a Japanese earthquake in 2011, one unlabeled bottle is unaccounted for, and at least one bottle from the original 40 is believed to have been opened and consumed. Those details help explain why surviving examples draw intense competition when they appear on the market.

The auction itself was unusual in format and setting. WhiskyCast said it was the first auction ever held at The Macallan Estate. It was conducted before an invitation-only audience of 50 leading whisky collectors, with other bidders participating by phone. All 42 lots sold, for a total of £3.3 million, or about $4.4 million, according to WhiskyCast.

Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s global head of whisky and spirits, said in a statement carried by WhiskyCast that the result reflected collectors’ long-running interest in The Macallan 1926. He called the price “a remarkable milestone in the history of whisky collecting,” pointing both to the centenary year of the vintage and to the new record for the Fine & Rare bottling.

The bottle’s listing also shows how closely the market tracks condition and verification. Sotheby’s described the lot as a 70cl bottle in its original wooden case, with a slightly scuffed neck label and a Russian tax strip over the top of the capsule. The auction house said The Macallan had verified the bottle code and other specific features of the bottle’s appearance.

The sale is likely to be cited as a benchmark for trophy whisky, but it does not describe the broader commercial whisky market. It involved a single bottle from one of the rarest and most sought-after Scotch releases ever offered, sold in a tightly curated auction setting to a small pool of global collectors. Even so, the result offers a clear snapshot of two forces shaping the top end of the spirits market at once: extreme scarcity and the growing impact of currency movements on how records are measured across borders.