Rare Japanese whiskey fetches Rs 4 crore in record-breaking sale by duty-free shop

An exceptional bottle of single malt Japanese whiskey fetched a duty-free shop in Istanbul airport €488,000 (about Rs 4.14 crore). The Yamazaki 55-Year-Old single malt was on offer in one of Unifree Duty Free’s outlets at the terminal since December last year.

Buyers were allowed to offer proposals on the whiskey due to its extreme high demand. A buyer from China eventually made the highest bid after eight potential buyers submitted credible offers.

The bottle of whiskey that fetched the exceptional price is the oldest single malt whisky in the House of Suntory’s history. It’s a combination of three outstanding single malts from the 1960s, including elements produced under Suntory founder Shinjiro Torii’s proper guidance.

Shinji Fukuyo, one of Suntory’s chief blenders, on their official site, gave a description of the very rare whiskey. He stated, “Very old Scotch Whiskies gave me this impression of them being perfect Greek sculptures with beautiful toned beauty. Instantly impressive as a piece of art. But the Yamazaki 55 is more like an old Buddhist statue. Calm and mysterious. It takes time to take in its inner beauty with the smell of Japanese incense and stripped old wood, like the Toshodaiji Temple in Nara.”

Suntory has elevated on the announcement of 100 bottles in Japan through a bidding process in 2020 by providing a very rare batch of another 100 bottles to the global market in 2021, with a number of products assigned to important Travel Department stores collaborators, including Gebr Heinemann, Unifree’s partnership associate at the Turkish gateway.