A single bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle 20 Year Old has become the most valuable American whiskey ever sold, fetching $162,500 including fees and taxes.
The bottle was part of a Sotheby’s auction that also set a record for the most valuable single-owner American whiskey collection ever offered.
The Great American Whiskey Collection achieved a total of $2.5m, more than doubling its low pre-sale estimate of $1.17m to $1.68m and comfortably surpassing the previous private-collection record of $965,000. Central to that result was the collection’s standout bottle: Old Rip Van Winkle 20 Year Old Single Barrel “Sam’s” from 1982.
Originally bottled for a Chicago liquor store and sold for $100, the “Sam’s” Van Winkle has become one of the most sought-after bottles in American whiskey collecting. Just 60 were produced, and this marked its first appearance at auction in more than a decade. Bottled at 133.4 proof, it is also the strongest Van Winkle release ever made.
Intense bidding pushed the final price well past the previous American whiskey auction record of $125,000, set by a one-off Old Rip Van Winkle “Van Winkle Selection” released for the Kentucky Bourbon Festival Master Distiller’s Auction in 2007.
Two other lots also crossed the six-figure threshold: a Van Winkle 18 Year Old “Binny’s” at $106,250 and a Very Very Old Fitzgerald “Blackhawk” 18 Year Old at $112,500. While those bottles led the sale, all 360 lots sold above their low estimates.
The auction arrives at a difficult moment for the spirits industry. Last week, the Financial Times reported that five of the world’s largest spirits companies, including Jack Daniel’s owner Brown-Forman, are holding $22bn of maturing stock after increased production collided with falling sales.
That slowdown has also been reflected in the secondary market, where prices for fine and rare bottles have softened. This auction stands apart, suggesting that demand for the rarest American whiskeys remains strong. Sotheby’s reported that one third of bidders were new to the category and half were aged 40 or under.
Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s global head of spirits, said the result demonstrated “the extraordinary rarity and quality of this collection” and the growing global appetite for American whiskey.
