In what could be a turning point for Irish whiskey, a special one-off decanter of Midleton Very Rare whiskey, embedded with rubies and an 18-carat gold collar, could become one of the most expensive Irish whiskeys ever sold. The 40th Anniversary Ruby Edition Irish whiskey is being auctioned with a reserve price of $60,000 on Blockbar, the blockchain marketplace for luxury wines and spirits.
The asset backed NFT represents a physical Waterford crystal decanter similar to the €20,000 limited-edition 40th Anniversary Ruby Edition. Unlike those 550 bottles, this unique bottle has an 18-carat gold collar, studded with a ring of rubies, identical in cut and quality, created by Cork-based Keanes Jewellers.
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‘Irish whiskey was in the doldrums’
It is a far cry from the world in which Midleton Very Rare was created in 1984.
Ireland in the 1980s was a country searching for its place in the world and Irish whiskey was something old boys would drink in the pub. The idea that it could become a luxury product was very distant, but not a complete fantasy. Barry Crockett, then the second-generation master distiller of Irish Distillers says, ‘Irish whiskey was really in the doldrums. There were two directions it could have gone – keep regarding it as a commodity, which would have failed, because you can’t increase profit, or try to be world-class.’
Irish Distillers decided to take the second route, says Crockett. ‘Historically, the name Midleton had always been associated with an extra level of quality. So I was tasked with using what was then modern technology to distil different pot-still and grain whiskeys with individual flavour profiles, so we could use the Midleton name on high-quality whiskeys, created by precisely blending very singular elements.’
At first, Midleton Very Rare gained a reputation only in Ireland – a rather double-edged reputation, as it was regarded as exorbitantly priced. ‘People fell out of the bed over that!’ remembers Crockett, even though the 1984 Vintage was priced at about half the RRP of the newly released 2024 Vintage, when adjusted for inflation.
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Crockett himself says that the whiskey’s quality has improved over the years. Of course, the problem with any innovation in whiskey is the time lag; changes at the distillation stage need years, if not decades to make it to the bottle. When he first started Midleton Very Rare, Crockett was relying on an existing stock – the precision he was looking for came years later and its reputation grew internationally in the third and fourth decades of its existence.
Can Irish whiskey break into the luxury market?
There have been fine and rare Irish whiskeys – generally priced in the four-figure bracket – for a while. Bushmills, the single-malt distiller in County Antrim, has released 30-plus-year whiskeys in the low thousands, and a 44-year-old limited-edition exclusive for Dubai Duty-Free, priced at around £9,500. This was after independent bottler JJ Corry showed it was possible with its 2019 release The Chosen – 100 bottles of a single cask of a 27-year-old single malt, at around £5,000 each.
There is a huge difference between a rare whiskey sought out by connoisseurs and the world of ‘luxury’, where a bottle of Macallan 1926 changes hands like a Picasso or Ferrari 250 GTO, or $60,000 could go towards a Highland Park or an Audemars Piguet. The spirit that has consistently crossed beyond category boundaries is single-malt Scotch. Irish – and, indeed American – whiskey is not known primarily for its single-malt. The methodology of production – pot-still whiskey or a blend of that and grain whiskey – can be confusing.
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Kevin O’Gorman, Midleton’s current master distiller, explains Very Rare’s blend of pot still and grain succinctly: ‘Grain whisky is produced from a mash bill of maize and malted barley, and is distilled in vertical column stills. The distillate is quite elegant – floral and herbal. Pot still whisky is produced from a mash bill of barley and malt barley, distilled in copper pot stills. It’s more robust, with more dark fruit and spice notes. What Middleton Very Rare does is bring the two styles together- with the master distiller deciding on the balance of the blend.’
The making of a $60,000 whiskey
Of course, there are nuances – as Crockett said, they are looking for precision. The pot stills can be adjusted so that a batch is a light, medium or heavy style; the ex-bourbon casks may have been refilled once, twice or more often; and then there is no restriction on the age of the whiskey used. Midleton Very Rare is very much the result of in-house blending.
In the case of the 40th Anniversary Ruby Edition, O’Gorman selected a cask each already blended by MVR’s three master distillers, a cask Crockett laid down in 2005 (already blended); one Brian Nation filled in 2014; and a very youthful cask O’Gorman created in 2021. If you nosed them separately (as I was able to), they offer in turn toasted nuts and leather, citrus peel and geraniums, then spearmint and cut grass; then, on the palate, rich fruit and nut milk chocolate and a spicy finish, pepper and salted caramel, then pears and vanilla. These all come through in the final blend, with a crucial extra layer.
Standing proudly apart in the historic Warehouse A2, where private clients are invited to taste from casks they may wish to invest in, is a tall ruby port pipe – the appropriate vessel to finish a 40th anniversary whiskey in for nine months. This adds red fruit notes – cassis, plum, even raspberry – as well as soft tannins, that elevate the whiskey several more notches.
Midleton has been the only pot-still and grain distiller to leap over the hurdles of ‘Irish’ and ‘not single malt’ to reach the Promised Land of Luxury. Its four (of a scheduled six, culminating in 2025 with a 50-year-old) Silent Still bottlings (£42,500) are pot-still whiskeys but have the cult cachet of being produced by the closed Old Midleton Distillery (now the Jameson Visitor Experience). And, in 2023, a single bottle of MVR’s The Pinnacle (blended from the 40 vintages thus far), was sold on BlockBar for $130,000.
That was a fixed-price, first-come, first-serve sale. Since that sale, BlockBar has a new COO, Jamie Ritchie – formerly Sotheby’s worldwide chairman of wines & spirits, and one of the founders of the Distillers’ Charity’s One of One auction. He argued for an auction for this one-off bottle: ‘I come from a variable pricing world, and my view is that I think with variable pricing, you’re more likely to end up with the person who wants it most – OK, and who can afford it – winning the bottle. That doesn’t necessarily happen when it’s first come, first served and I think something unique like this deserves that.’
Ritchie believes the fact that there are bottles of the Ruby without the same adornment adds to the attraction. ‘I love one-of-ones, but even more so when it’s attached to a wider release, as this is – it’s one of one, but also one of 550. So, other people will have tasted the same liquid, but no one else will have that bottle.’
We shall see on Thursday just how much interest a luxury Irish whiskey can generate and will open the gates to more such releases.
The auction for Midleton Very Rare 40th Anniversary Ruby Edition, bottle number 1 is at blockbar.com; to purchase one of the remaining 549 bottles for €20,000, go to midletondistillerycollection.com.
