Rare Yamazaki Whiskey Sells for a Record $1 Million

A 700 milliliter bottle of Yamazaki 50 Year Old set a new world record for a Japanese whiskey when it sold for 8,250,000 Hong Kong dollars, just over a million dollars.

This extremely rare whiskey was the highlight of an auction held on Saturday in Hong Kong by UK-based auction house Bonhams.

The final price was almost double the maximum estimatewhich was between 2.8 million and 4.2 million Hong Kong dollars. According to Bonhams, a heated bidding dispute between three collectorsbefore the record sale was made.

This sale “highlighted the strong demand for ultra-rare Japanese whiskeys“, stated the auctioneer, in .

Being one of the rarest Japanese whiskeys in the world, Yamazaki 50 Year Old was bottled only in 2005, 2007 and 2011. It is the second oldest variant of the Yamazaki distillery, owned by the Japanese group.

The whiskey, adorned with a label made from traditional washi paper and bearing a signature from Suntory’s quirky master blender, , was bottled exclusively for the 50th anniversary of Club Natsume, a members-only bar located in Nagoya.

The sale of Yamazaki 50 Year Old surpassed the previous record of 6.2 million of Hong Kong dollars, achieved in 2020 for a bottle of Yamazaki 55 Year Old.

Amayes Aouliglobal head of wines and spirits at Bonhams, considered that breaking the world record at auction for a Japanese whiskey represents “an important milestone“.

O absolute world record for whiskey at auction belongs to a Scotch whiskey: a bottle of The Macallan 1926 (Fine and Rare label), sold in London in 2023 for around 2.7 million dollars.

Japanese whiskeys began to appear at auctions in 2015, when a complete set of 54 bottles from the Ichiro’s Card Series sold for HK$3.79 million — at the time, a record price for a batch of Japanese whiskey, recalls .

The secondary market for Japanese whiskey reached its peak in early 2022before entering a slump that lasted until 2025. The most recent sale at Bonhams provides a boost to this downward trend.