End Date : Jan 07 2026 08:00 PM
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Macallan 1948 Select Reserve. 51 Years Old. One of 366 bottles, all of which carry a unique date corresponding to one of the 366 days of 1948 which was a leap year. Matured in a Sherry Cask. 700ml. 46.6%. In wooden presentation box, tube and outer packaging with certificate.
A bottle of the famous Macallan 1948 51-year-old Speyside single malt whisky. This prestige edition Macallan was released around the turn of the millennium in an edition of just 366 bottles, each individually numbered with one of the days of the year 1948, which was a leap year.
This 1948 Macallan 51-year-old was assembled from a batch of three sister sherry casks distilled from summer barley harvested in 1947 and is particularly desirable as it carries a very noticeable woodsmokey phenolicity (a consequence of the industry’s return to the use of peat in the immediate post-war period) and was bottled at its natural strength of 46.6%.
The grandest of Speyside’s blue chip distilleries, Macallan was founded in 1824 and carved a reputation for luxury single malt whisky in the 1980s with string of 18-year-old and 25-year-old sherry-matured vintage single malts distilled in the 1960s and 1970s, building on the renown of earlier highly-regarded licensed bottlings by Gordon & MacPhail and Campbell, Hope and King.
In the early 2000s, as the supply and quality of even the best sherry casks declined dramatically, Macallan introduced their Fine Oak series, an initially controversial range of bottlings that included bourbon-matured spirit in the cask recipe. While the Fine Oak series took some time to find its audience, Macallan’s status as the top Speyside distillery - particularly at auction - was already well-established and today a legion of eager Macallan fans ensure that each new luxury bottling from the distillery sells out immediately on release.
Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.
This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.
| BID | DATE | TIME | |
|---|---|---|---|
| £8,600.00 | 7th January 2026 | 07:28 PM | |
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