Springbank 50-year-old (D.1919, B.1970) 66.3 PROOF 26.2/3 FL.OZ.

What can be said about whisky distilled over a hundred years ago? That it is old, rare, unique, valuable (or priceless), historic – each of these descriptions is appropriate, but leaves a slight sense of dissatisfaction. The following information comes from Angus Martin's book "Campbeltown Whisky, an Encyclopaedia" published by The Grimsay Press in 2020.

In 1963, Hedley G. Wright, then a director of J.&A. Mitchell & Co., announced that he had a sherry hogshead cask filled in 1919 in storage and intended to keep it for a further seven years.

He described the drink as extremely expressive, almost devoid of oak bitterness. In November 1970, the word became flesh; after half a century of maturation, the barrel, in which only 74 of the original 266 litres of whisky remained, went to the bottling plant. Its contents were enough to fill 12 cases plus one bottle, which took a dozen or so years to distribute. And so, in April 1974, the Italian distributor ordered 12 bottles, making history as the first importer of 50-year-old whisky. In May of that year, Angus Mackenzie, manager of the Kingsknowes Hotel in Galashiels, admitted in an interview that he had a bottle of Springbank 50 years old worth at least £50(!), which he did not intend to open, but charged 10 pence for showing it. In January 1988, one of the Edinburgh newspapers wrote about the sale of a bottle of 50-year-old Springbank for the “astronomical sum” of £2,500. In 2013, the distillery sold its last bottle to a whisky bar in China for £50,000. Finally, in 2019, collectors voted Springbank the best whisky investment; that year, at Sotheby's, a bottle of Springbank 50 years old, complete with an Italian import document from 1974, found a buyer for £266,200.