March Whisky Auction Highlights 2025
Welcome to our March 2025 Whisky Auction Highlights blog! There’s some wonderful bottles coming under the hammer this month from the likes of Port Ellen, Highland Park and Talisker, so we’re going to dive right in.
Casks in Bond
We have a pair of great maturing whisky casks up for grabs this month, with both of these very promising casks currently held in bond in Scotland by indie bottlers Duncan Taylor.
Cask 900062 is a bourbon barrel of Miltonduff 2011 13-year-old. The cask was regauged in February and was found to hold 189.24 bulk litres at a strength of 61.27%. This would currently yield approximately 270 x 70cl bottles of cask strength whisky, currently at 13 years old. This cask was filled on 25th April 2011, so the whisky will soon be turning 14 years old.
Our other cask this month is Cask 900683, a bourbon barrel of Glentauchers 2008 16-year-old, which was also regauged in February, at which time it held approximately 197.25 bulk litres at a strength of 60.4%. This would currently yield approximately 281 x 70cl bottles of cask strength whisky, which is due to turn 17 years old in August but is drinking very well already.
Distillery Bottlings
We’ll start with an absolute superstar - this marvellous old Catto’s Very Old Highland Whisky, which was bottled for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (better known today as P&O). Catto’s is an historic blended whisky company founded in Aberdeen by James Catto in 1861 and today is part of the Inver House stable, who celebrated the brand’s 150th anniversary in 2011 with a special 25-year-old blend.
Catto’s whisky actually came to prominence in large part thanks to its association with P&O Ferries, making this bottle particularly interesting. The original James Catto focused on overseas markets, and managed to get his whisky onto the cruise ships and ferries of both the Peninsular & Oriental and White Star shipping lines, whose bosses had connections to his alma mater, Aberdeen Grammar School. This particular bottle of Catto’s Very Old Highland is rather difficult to date - it bears the gold medals awarded to Catto’s at the Paris and London Exhibitions in 1878 and 1884, and we reckon it’s at least 100 years old, but it may even date back to the end of the 19th century.
Elsewhere, we have some slightly more modern Distillery Bottlings, with recent hits such as Cragganmore’s 150th Anniversary edition, a small batch Cragganmore 15-year-old bottled at a hearty 48.8% in 2019, plus a 2010 edition of Highland Park 30-year-old, the popular Ardbeg 23-year-old Twentysomething and a great stash of turn of the millennium bottlings of Islay single malts including gems like the red stripe Laphroaig 10-year-old Cask Strength at 57.3%, the all-time classic Bowmore 30-year-old Sea Dragon and connoisseurs' favourite Ardbeg 1975-1998.
This month’s older official bottlings include a litre bottle of Dalmore 12-year-old from the 1970s and a wonderful old Glen Moray 1960 small batch bottling from 1987, while from further afield there’s the beautiful and highly collectable Jack Daniel’s Bicentennial bottle released in 1996, a splendid 1980s novelty Jim Beam 8-year-old decanter in the shape of an old rotary pay telephone, and an admittedly less wacky but equally excellent Chichibu London Edition bottled at 51.5% in 2022 - it's an eclectic sale by nature, and there’s really something for everyone this month.
Independent Bottlings
We’ve got some really exciting old Independent Bottlings this month. Headliners include a pair of Cadenhead’s magnificent dumpy bottles: a 1963 Glenfiddich 24-year-old bottled at 46% in 1987, and a Highland Park 1966 21-year-old at the same strength from the following year.
Over in Elgin, Cadenhead’s great rivals Gordon & MacPhail chip in with some tremendous whiskies, including an ancient 1961 Glenrothes bottled in 2000 for the now-defunct Rare Old series, the rare Strathisla 1948/1961 bottled for Charles & Di’s Royal Wedding on July 29th 1981 and some stunning Talisker including a rich dark chestnut-coloured 100-proof Talisker 1957 and a 1990s black label Talisker 1955 - one of the last of G&M’s ‘Golden Eagle’ Taliskers, this is a 70cl bottle, meaning it must have been bottled at some point after January 1st 1992, which makes the whisky at least 36 years old.
Talisker’s 1955 vintage supplied several legendary Gordon & MacPhail bottlings - this is the only one at what was then G&M’s standard strength of 40%, and is a delicious example of old school long-aged Talisker spirit, with the smoke taking a back seat to some fantastic ancient sherry flavours.
Closed Distilleries
The new distillery may be up and running, but there’s still plenty of classic Port Ellen from the old distillery out there, and we’ve got a great selection of it this month. Bottles to look out for include Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseurs Choice bottlings of Port Ellen 1979, 1980 and 1982, plus Hart Brothers’ excellent young sherry cask matured Port Ellen 1983 14-year-old. There’s also some single cask PEs from Douglas Laing’s Old Malt Cask and McGibbon’s Provenance ranges and a Signatory Vintage Port Ellen 1982 26-year-old, a single hogshead cask bottled in 2009 at a remarkably potent natural cask strength of 58.4%.
Other Closed Distillery highlights this month include Cadenhead’s Lochside 1981-2003, which was a sherry hogshead cask bottled at its phenomenal cask strength of 59%, plus a fantastic Caperdonich 27-year-old released as part of former owner Chivas Brothers’ Secret Speyside Collection in 2023 at a sturdy 49.2%, and an extremely tasty Douglas Laing Rosebank 1990 19-year-old bottled from a refill sherry butt in 2009.
Moving further afield there’s a beautiful old 1940-ish bottle of the classic VR Irish Whisky from the Dunville’s distillery in Belfast, which closed in 1936, and we also have some great old single grain whiskies from closed distilleries Cambus and Port Dundas, with the former represented by a single cask Cambus 1989 32-year-old by newcomer indie bottlers Caskshare and the latter including a remarkable 43-year-old Port Dundas 1978 XOP from Douglas Laing.
Single Casks
There’s some absolutely delicious single cask treats this month. Officially-bottled single cask whiskies in this month’s sale include last year’s Tamdhu 2004 19-year-old Cask 5249, a first fill Oloroso sherry hogshead bottled for Fortnum & Mason at 55.6%, plus 2023’s Benromach 2004 19-year-old Cask 358, a Distillery Exclusive first fill new oak cask at a mighty 58.7% and some great Glendronach vintages from the early 1990s including a superb Glendronach 1992 17-year-old Cask 401, which was a first fill Oloroso sherry butt released in 2009 and has the distinction of being one of the very first pair of official single casks released in the UK following the distillery's near-miraculous revival by Billy Walker’s Benriach Distillery Co. the previous year. These eye-poppingly good sherry casks were a revelation to the general populace of whisky fans and really put Glendronach back on the map after years in the doldrums.
Going back a little further in the glory years and there’s one of the all-time classics from Islay - Ardbeg’s 1976 25-year-old Cask 2390, a truly sensational sherry cask released for Islay’s Feis Ile festival in 2002. For the collectors we’ve also got an older and rather more obscure 1990s single cask OB in the form of Bruichladdich’s 1980 14-year-old Cask Strength single cask 3351, which was bottled for the late lamented Oddbins wine merchant chain in 1994 and weighs in at a bracing 54.1%.
We’ve also got some very interesting private bottlings this month, including a bourbon-matured Springbank 1999 single cask bottled in 2017 for a Cumberland masonic society at a tempting 52.1%, and a 1973 Macallan bottled as a 26-year-old in 1999 by Murray McDavid for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Finally, there’s a terrific sherried Port Dundas 1973 32-year-old bottled by Duncan Taylor for their Rare Auld series in 2005, and a pair of top class single cask bourbons from yesteryear in the form of a 2001 bottling of Blanton’s Single Barrel and an early Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel bottled back when Buffalo Trace still sealed the bottles with gold wax, a practice they discontinued in the mid-Noughties.
That's it for this month's Auction Highlights Blog, but as ever this is just a small taste of the delights from this month's auction - check out the full sale here, Good Luck and Happy Bidding!