Total Lots Sold:
13
View Lots
Do you have this bottle for sale?
SELL IT TODAYHAMMER PRICE OVER TIME
This graph displays data solely from Whisky-Online Auctions past sales history. Please note the filling level of the liquid and the condition of an item can affect the price negatively, so please check individual Lot sales below if there's a sudden dip in the graph.
HAVE ONE FOR SALE?
Submit your details along with an image and a description of your bottle. We'll then be in touch with the best way to proceed.
WHY SELL WITH WHISKY-ONLINE AUCTIONS?
0% Sellers Commission
Free Collections Available
Over 30 Years In The Whisky Industry
Over 1,700 Five Star Trustpilot Reviews
We Sell The Rarest Whiskies Ever Bottled
Global Buying Audience Including Far East Buyers
Bespoke Auction Platform
Thousands Of Active Bidders
Large Database Of Newsletter Subscribers
Over 36k Social Media Followers
Bowmore 25 Year Old - Seagulls - 1990s
Bowmore 25 Year Old. Seagulls. Ceramic bottle. Bottled 1990s. 75cl. 43%.
Legend has it that a pair of gulls fly ceaselessly above Loch Indaal, on the shores of which lies the Bowmore Distillery. When the Scots spread from their Irish homeland to create the kingdom of Dál Riada, the Pictish and Brythonic tribes who already occupied Scotland resisted fiercely. Much blood was spilt as war raged between the Celtic enemies.
Cara, a daughter of Brude mac Maelchon, the Pictish King, fell in love with a captured Scottish warrior and helped him escape. Together they fled westwards to Dál Riad As they rowed towards the young warrior's home on the shores of Loch Indaal, a terrible storm lashed their boat, sending it crashing against the rocks.
The young Scot's clansmen found only splintered wreckage of the boat and no trace of the lovers - but a pair of white gulls soared and swooped together across the Loch, settling neither on the western nor the eastern shore, as if torn between the two. This legend endures, and today, before a storm, the Bowmore Distillery echoes to the haunted cry of a pair of gulls.
Constructed in 1779, Bowmore is Islay’s oldest distillery and dominates the island’s capital. After changing hands several times early in the 20th century, Bowmore distillery was bought by Stanley P. Morrison in 1963 and embarked on a golden era. This lasted until the early 1980s, when a strangely soapy character took hold in Bowmore’s spirit, before another run of extraordinary quality in the 1990s. The Japanese firm Suntory took full control of Bowmore in 1994, the year after the first release of Black Bowmore, a legendary whisky that catalysed the prestige whisky market.
Early official bottlings of Bowmore are highly sought after, particularly the Sherriff’s bottlings, the stunning Bicentenary editions and the 1950s-70s vintage editions that appeared from the early 1980s. The modern Bowmore 1964 Trilogies and subsequent prestige bottlings are also fiercely contested by deep-pocketed fans, as are the numerous fabulous old indie bottlings of 1960s vintages by Samaroli, Giaccone, Duncan Taylor, Signatory and others.
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.