The Most Expensive Scotch Whiskies In 2022
A Look At The World’s Most Expensive Whiskies (Japanese Too!)
By Richard Thomas
(Credit: Beam-Suntory)
As American enthusiasts are left scratching their heads over exactly why even Sazerac Rye is so scarce that it’s now kept in locked cabinets at the liquor store, retail prices for limited edition whiskeys that should be scarce continue to spiral. Leaving inflation out of it, the kind of bourbon one would trot out for Holiday guests is now priced between $200 and $500 as a matter of routine.
Even so, one need only look at the prices fetched by foreign bottles labeled “whisky” instead of “whiskey” to understand that American the stuff is still relatively cheap. So it was when we first looked at this subject six years ago, and the market for Scotch and Japanese whiskies has soared into the stratosphere since. For comparison, as I write this the most expensive retail price listed for an American whiskey is the $40,000 being asked for a bottle of Willet Single Barrel 22 Year Old Rye. Compare that to the Scotch whisky listed at the bottom of this Top Ten.
Here I will focus on items and prices listed for retail, not the sometimes insane prices commanded at auction. Also, I am looking only at individual bottles, and excluding collections. Wine Searcher is an excellent, free source of information on the subject of market value, or the actual prices being charged by retailers.
The World’s Ten Most Expensive Whiskies:
The Yamazaki 55 Year Old: $881,682
The Macallan Lalique 50 Year Old: $257,712
The Macallan Lalique 55 Year Old: $165,440
The Macallan Lalique 62 Year Old: $165,275
The Macallan ‘Tales of The Macallan Volume I’ 71 Year Old : $142,730
Bowmore Aston Martin Black Bowmore DB5: $126,637
The Macallan Lalique 72 Year Old: $130,748
The Macallan Red Collection 78 Year Old: $122,255
The Macallan 50 Year Old: $118,761
The Macallan Lalique VI 65 Year Old: $107,435
What has changed since 2016. The first salient fact is that an ultra-aged, Japanese whisky sits at the top of the list: Yamazaki 55 Year Old, with a retail price approaching the one million dollar mark. The listed retail price is three times greater than the runner-up. Released in 2020 in a run of merely 100 bottles, this is the oldest whisky ever released by Suntory, and is generally billed as the oldest Japanese whisky (of any source) to date.
(Credit: Edrington)
Another thing that has changed is the price range represented overall. Even excluding the Yamazaki 55, I was not exaggerating earlier when I used the term “stratosphere.” The most expensive whisky on the list in 2016 was The Macallan Lalique 50 Year Old at $69,298; that bottle now commands $257, 712. Furthermore, the most expensive whisky in 2016 held a price tag that lags some 40 grand behind what the cheapest whisky on this list commands.
Of course, The Macallan–and their Lalique series in particular–continues to dominate the Top Ten. Interestingly, of the three bottles not named Macallan that made it into the Top Ten back then, only one even cracks the Top Twenty-Five today: The Balvenie 50 Year Old, which now commands $42,753, up from $34,044. It’s worth remembering that in a list dominated by The Macallan, even retail prices are driven to a large extent by the sacks of cash fetched at auction. The Balvenie 50 Year Old, however, is not so regularly seen at auction, so it’s price increase is probably a better reflection of retail realities.
