The Great Pyramids. Stonehenge. The Empire State Building. Dolly Parton…We humans are amazed at that which is BIG.
Adding to this list of gargantuan things, a new Guinness Book of World Records has been set for the largest bottle of whisky ever sold. The name – The Intrepid. The colossal bottle is nearly 6 ft tall (5’11), holding 311 liters (414.6 of 750mls), and width twice that of the average person.
And you know what they say – it’s what’s on the inside that counts. In this case, it’s 32 year old Macallan, so a WHOLE BUNCH of the good stuff.
In the end, Intrepid sold for $1.4M via Lyon and Turnbull Auction House. Not too shab.
The winning bid fell short of the world record for the most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold at auction: a bottle distilled at Macallan in 1926 that fetched $1.9 million in 2019.
The Intrepid project was created by Daniel Monk, of Fah Mai and Rosewin Holdings, in memory of his father Captain Stanley Monk (the auction day would have been his 80th birthday), and inspired by his passion for adventure, exploration and a desire to help raise money for several charities.
The team named The Intrepid to celebrate the drive and record-breaking achievements of 11 of the world’s most pioneering explorers who are featured on the bottle. These include such luminaries as Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Dr. Geoff Wilson, Karen Darke MBE, Olly Hicks, Sarah Outen MBE, Dwayne Fields FRGS, Levison Wood FRGS, Felicity Aston MBE and past Scottish Adventurers of the Year Jamie Ramsay and Will Copestake.
Founder of The Intrepid Project, Daniel Monk, said: “For me and the whole team The Intrepid project has always been about more than money. This is a passion project to celebrate the life of my late father, Captain Stanley Monk who was himself an explorer and achieved many amazing things during his life. Today would have been his birthday so it was a perfect date to put The Intrepid up for auction.”
The project is supporting the explorers’ chosen environmental, physical and mental well-being charities. These include Marie Curie, selected by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), chosen by Jamie Ramsay.
The founders of The Intrepid project felt it was important to make the auction accessible to collectors at all levels and created a small number of exclusive bottle sets and miniatures as part of the lots on offer at Lyon & Turnbull. These comprised a collection of 12 smaller 50 cl bottles (~17oz), each filled with the remaining 32-year-old.
The Macallan whisky from the same casks used to fill the record-breaking bottle. Each set included a replica of the main bottle design along with individual bottles dedicated to each of the explorers associated with the project.