The first bottle of whisky from Islay’s newest distillery fetched a lot of money. Details below from their press release.
First Bottle of Kilchoman Whisky from Cask No.1 Auctions for over £5000
A limited edition bottle of Kilchoman Distillery’s first ever single malt from cask number one, filled in December 2005, was sold at auction for a staggering £5,400. The winning bid was made by Niels Ladefoged, originally from Denmark and who lives in the UK. The bottle of the three year old single malt has a unique design and is the only one of its kind. All proceeds of the auction will go to Islay charities.
The bottle and its presentation was exclusively designed for the distillery. The bottle is contained in an attractive box that was hand made by Howard Proctor, who is also a member of Kilchoman’s production team, and features a watercolour on the label, painted by Nicola Wilks, an artist from Otter Ferry Argyll with three generations of family connections with Islay.
The auction took place at Kilchoman Distillery’s Open Day on Thursday 28th May at 12.30pm, during Feis Ile, the Islay Festival of Malt & Music. The week long island festival has helped raise further awareness of Kilchoman’s very first single malt that will be launched on 9th September this year.
Anthony Wills, Founder & Managing Director of Kilchoman Distillery said: “We are delighted with the winning bid and a huge congratulations to Niels Ladefoged. Our thanks go to all those, both local and international, who made their bids for such a wonderful piece of whisky history. The money raised from the auction will go to Islay charities. The response from our auction has been encouraging and we look forward to an exciting year ahead and the launch of our very first single malt.”
Niels Ladefoged said:”I am delighted to have secured the very first bottle of Kilchoman Whisky and even more so that the proceeds are going to local charities. I have been fortunate enough to come to the island for many years, and I think it is one of the most welcoming places in the world. I know how hard people work with the charities and it is an absolute honour to be able to help in a small way. I feel the first bottle exemplifies the enterpreneurial spirit of the island in general, and Anthony Wills and the Kilchoman project in particular.”
The much anticipated single malt has been getting seals of approval from a very young age. The one month old Kilchoman spirit has received a remarkable score of 94 out of 100 in Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible 2008, rating it as a “superstar whisky that gives us all a reason to live!” In April 2009, the two year old spirit sold out on the first day of the Limburg Whisky Fair in Germany.
Kilchoman Distillery prides itself in taking whisky back to its roots and is the first distillery to be built on Islay for 124 years. A visit to Kilchoman Distillery gives everyone the opportunity to see all that is best in the grass-roots traditions of malt whisky distilling – from barley to bottle. The distillery location, Rockside Farm is said to grow the best malting barley on the island.
For more information on Kilchoman Distillery, announcements and events please telephone 01496 850011 or visit www.kilchomandistillery.com.
Great! No we wait for the real Kilchoman Single Malt.
I have sampled the 2 yo new spirit, and it was pretty good.
So looking forward to September!
Does anyone know what method Jim Murray uses when he gives one month old make a 94? Does he go by how much he enjoys it, his educated guess of what it will taste in the long run, how it compares to other barely matured spirits like corn whiskey, or some other standard that is specifically suited to the evaluation of premature scotch?
[...] Advocate reports that the first bottle of Kilchoman auctioned for [...]
first, for those of you who might have
missed it, this Kilchoman entry is a
follow-up to the previous posting of
May 6th, announcing & advertising the
coming sale of the rare/precious 1st
bottle which you now know sold for 5400
GBP= the ex-vat price equivalent of
well over 200 bottles of a month or so
younger new make spirit Kilchoman, still
available at royalmilewhiskies.com:
cask 358, d.13-12-06 & b.27-4-09, 61.9%
@25.17 GBP ex-vat.+ shipping>
for all the details of my high opinion
of the make go to the bottom of this
page, hit next page & scroll back a smidgen. if you want this particular (considerably less) valuable collectors’ item you’d better hurry cuz the price
has already gone up a pound (from cask
304 @24.30) & most everything bottled
from now on will have to be called whisky
because it’ll be 3 or more years old.
that by itself will probably jack up the
ante a coupleA. i won’t presume to speculate on how the contents of the
great one compare to what is in these
that came (as they are, after all, NOT
YET quite whisky) before & the next REAL stuff coming down the pike. BUT…if i were a betting man, i’d offer you the
appropriate odds you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the 3 in a
blind tasting. the important thing IS that THIS IS a better than average malt beverage on its own &, when you factor in the price it’s a real steal^
second, Red Arremer: i can’t quite match
Jim Murray’s numbers here but i made
every one of the 1 to several months old expressions (in 5cl miniatures) i tasted some close variant of 23-23-22-22 or
around 90. perhaps strange to you who
don’t seem to be that enthusiastic about
the possible merits of such younguns, i
also rated the several 1 & now 2 (almost
3) year olds very much the same= so far
it has NOT got noticeably better with a
wee more age. then again, far fewer
than 100 (less than 5%) of the coming up on 2000 different single malt expressions (95% opened, tasted & rated) in my collection rank as highly. if McEwan’s
Port Charlottes & young Bruichladdichs
are any guide we probably won’t have that
much a handle on it for some time. i
tasted cask samples of both of the new
Loch Indaal West Shore beauties not long
after they were old enough to be called
Whisky & they blew me away. my next
encounter was PC5 & i + well over 4 out
of 5 of the many people who’ve tasted it
against PC6 & now PC7 (in my presence)
have liked/rated 5 slightly above the
later two. but then, some time (i’m 71)
back, it suddenly came to me that, just
as is often the case with age, beauty (& the relation between the two) in life in general, whisky is poorly served by many of the cliches passed along to us (&
repeatedly reinforced] by those whose interest they serve<
IF 1. you use Jim Murray’s rating/scoring method as he outlines it in all of his
Whisky Bibles (how to read the bible) &
as i DO believe he (for the most part)
uses it &
IF 2. you taste ALL whiskies BLIND &
against at least 4 or 5 appropriate
other expressions &
IF 3. you try hard to leave behind any
of your prejudices/preconceptions: no matter how expert,
knowledgeable or lucid they are, there
is only so much you can learn from
other people…to get what’s really
there you have to taste/drink, listen or touch each & every relevant thing that
comes your way. & if you are serious,
pay attention & have a good system for
remembering what you experience, you
will most likely be able to make your
own rules. at very least, you’ll be
much better able to understand & use
those that others will try to pass on
to you, sometimes without understanding
them themselves. one of the wonderful things about this blog is it can help
point out many paths, none of which
mean much unless you take them
i hope to come back after the basketball
surgery & rant some more^
but don’t hold your *.
Great for charity.
I tried a 3yo Kilchoman recently which had been finished in a sherry cask for 2 and a half months and it was very nice. Almost too nice for a whisky that young.
John
Another bottle went on sale yesterday as well that might be worth mentioning. A Springbank 1919, bottled in 1970, Asking price was 55.000 euro and the current offer is 47.000
http://www.worldwhiskyindex.com/default.asp?id=2&page=&nieuwsid=18