To mark its bicentenary last year, storied distillery the Macallan launched its ‘TIME:SPACE’ collection, which feature a two bottle limited-edition offering priced at around £150,000. The liquid was notable, but so too was the circular vessel it came in, which resembled a flying saucer and was itself encased in a chieftain’s oak shield adorned with spikes, designed by Glasgow-based Irish designer and wood artist John Galvin.
For a recent Johnnie Walker project, Balmain’s creative director Olivier Rousteing designed a Baccarat crystal and gold decanter with an elaborate stopper resembling the Frenchman’s signature ‘strong shoulders’. And William Grant & Sons launched a limited-edition 50-year-old Ladyburn whisky that featured abstract works by Korean contemporary artist Ha Chong-Hyun. The set of 10 bottles was priced at £176,000. Increasingly, it seems, a bottle of whisky is not just something to be consumed, but an ornament or objet d’art that is displayed – maybe in its own purpose-built cabinet.
Perhaps the clearest distillation of this trend comes in the form of Distillers One of One, a biennial charity auction of Scotch lots donated by major distillery groups. At this year’s auction, at Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh, on 10 October, the lots will include a 1983 Port Ellen whisky encased in a painted-glass sculpture by German glass artist Wilfried Grootens. ‘Port Ellen Prism’ (est. £150,000-£300,000) is an extension of a project at the distillery (which reopened in 2024 after a 40-year closure) in which chemical data on whiskies is represented as swirling digital artworks. Grootens has individually painted 30 or more layers of glass which are laminated to create a 3D effect representing the smoke of the Islay malt. One Chivas Brothers offering is Aberlour’s ‘The Mouth of the Chattering Burn’ (est, £20,000-£40,000), a 53-year-old single malt in a decanter that called upon the skills of three craftspeople: glassblower, mouldmaker and glass artist.
While the world of fine wine has dabbled in collaborations with artists who have designed labels for bottles – most notably, since 1945, Mouton Rothschild’s labels have featured work by Dali, MirO and other contemporary artists – some believe spirits are better suited to this kind of visual elevation. ‘A whisky will benefit from storage in a cool, dark cellar or warehouse, but doesn’t require it like a wine does,’ says JonnyFowle, global head of spirits for Sotheby’s, which will conduct the One of One auction. ‘So it lends itselfto display a lot more.’
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By bringing two worlds into each other’s orbit, luxury groups such as Lalique (owner of Glenturret whisky) and LVMH (owned by noted patron of the arts Bernard Arnault) are able to reach new (younger) markets. LVMH regularly releases special editions of its Hennessy cognac with the likes of Irish street artists Maser and Conor Harrington, designer Kim Jones and rapper Nas.
In some ways, luxury brands, and by extension their customers (specifically, private clients), have taken the place of the nobility as patrons of the arts. However, the art/whisky crossover is certainly not the most economic way of acquiring art, says Fowle: ‘At a previous One of One, we sold a cask of 1978 Talisker with the cask-end painted by [Turner Prize nominee] Callum Innes for £625,000. No Innes work would reach that on its own, so a fan of that artist would have to be a whisky lover too.’
As well as his Macallan creation, Iohn Galvin has created pieces to hold bottles of Highland Park, Midleton Very Rare and more. ‘The consideration I always have in my mind is, “How can I dojustice to this rare whisky?”’ he says. ‘It needs to be aesthetically pleasing, but every element has to tell a story too. I’m not interested in luxury – covering everything with gold or giving wood a piano-polished finish. Real luxury is an object created by a craftsperson, working in a medium they truly understand, for 50 or more hours.’
Dhavall Gandhi, a former Macallan whisky-maker, has committed to this direction completely for his new brand, Kandoblanc. Inspired by One of One, each release is a unique composition – including Dragon in Clouds for this year’s auction. On the Kandoblanc website, there is no ‘Our whiskies’ page but there is one with the title ‘Objects’ instead. Very little is revealed about the liquid inside (Dragon in Clouds contains ‘a 60-year-old single malt scotch whisky’) and Gandhi is unapologetic about Kandoblanc being an art project – as you would expect from a man who carries around with him an incredibly fine Japanese calligraphy brush made from the belly hair of a mouse.
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But there is a point to his eccentricity. The brush is one of the last of its type because nobody left alive has the skills to make one any more. ‘There are other arts we are about to lose,’ says Gandhi. He mentions Japanese lacquerware and genuine Murano battuto glassware. ‘The last practitioners are dying; there is no demand for them; they have no apprentices. My mission is to give a voice to all these art forms.’
Some collectors, however, believe whisky-as-art has gone too far. This includes the founder of the Whisky Exchange and Elixir Distillers, Sukhinder Singh, whose whisky collection has been described by one fellow connoisseur as ‘a national treasure’. Although he makes an exception for One of One (and has successfully bid for previous lots) because of the charitable aspect, Singh believes too many recent releases have put ‘packaging before liquid’.
‘When it is a piece of art or a collector’s item before it’s a whisky, very few people will open it and drink it,’ he says. ‘So it doesn’t gain a reputation for its quality. Traditionally, in fine wines and spirits, demand increases as supply of a delicious drink diminishes, and that’s what increases value.’
Indeed, there are signs that the whisky-as-art boom may be slowing down. In May, Bowmore’s ARC-54: Irides Edition (a 54YO single malt in a bottle designed by Aston Martin) sold at Sotheby’s for £112,500, which was £75,000 less than its 2023 predecessor.
The third sculpture in Dalmore’s Luminary series of collaborations with architects, designed by Ben Dobbin of Foster + Partners and housing a 52-year-old single malt, raised only $HK400,000 (half the lower estimate). And a wooden trunk containing 10 bottles of whisky from the Balvenie 50-Year-Old Private Cask failed to find a buyer.
Fowle, though, insists there will be no shortage of willing buyers at One of One, with many undeterred from drinking the actual liquid within the objets they purchase: ‘It may be the centrepiece of their collection for years, but they plan to drink it
on their retirement,’ says Fowle. ‘I’ve even heard people say their intention is to drink the liquid and then refill the decanter with their ashes!’
