The single malt giants like Macallan still drive the top of the whisky market, but in true American style, bourbon enthusiasts are not content to let the old world take all the laurels. In fact, the highest hammer price at a Leland Little Rare Spirits Auction was brought by two exceedingly rare bottles of Jack Daniel(‘s), which sold for $23,000 for the pair. Old and rare tend to be the qualities that determine a fine whisky’s value on the secondary market, and so to put the fine bottles in our current Rare Spirits Auction in the appropriate context, we’ve unearthed a few old and rare facts about whisky to set the tone:

In 2010, workers attempting to restore Ernest Shackelton’s hut in the Antarctic discovered three cases of whisky that Shackelton had taken along on the “Nimrod” expedition - the earliest, least impressively named, of his three famous attempts to reach the South Pole. The wooden cases themselves were frozen solid, but the whisky itself stayed liquid even in the frigid -30 Celsius temperature.

In 2017, a company called Wealth Solutions opened what they claim was the oldest bottle of whisky in the world - an Old Vatted Glenlivet 1862 - in order to place tiny drops of the spirit into a limited edition “Whisky Watch” made by Swiss watchmaker Louis Moinet.