If anyone forgot to get me a birthday present last week, Whisky Advocate has a suggestion for you:
Many of us consider an 18 year old scotch a treat, and regard a well-aged 25 or 30 year old expression as an indulgent luxury. These are mere youngsters compared to the new Gordon & MacPhail Generations 80 year old distilled at Glenlivet Distillery. Matured for eight decades, this whisky spans the term of office of 15 U.S. presidents. It was approaching 50 years old when President George H.W. Bush took the oath of office, making him the last sitting president to be older than the whisky, and from Biden back to Clinton, none of the last five presidents were even born when this cask was filled. It’s a Speyside single malt disgorged from a sherry butt filled on February 3, 1940, which extends Gordon & MacPhail’s unbroken run of releasing the world’s oldest whisky, a record the company has held since the launch of the Generations series in 2010.
Gordon & MacPhail will release 250 crystal decanters globally, although the price remains a closely guarded secret ahead of the auction of decanter no. 1 as part of a Generations package going under the hammer at Sotheby’s, Hong Kong on October 7. Proceeds from this single lot will benefit Scottish rewilding charity Trees for Life, whose work involves restoring areas of Caledonian forest habitat to the Scottish Highlands. The winning bidder will receive decanter no. 1 with a set of matching glasses, the framed cask end of the Generations 80 year old Cask no. 340, a signed lithograph of Sir David Adjaye’s original design sketches for Generations, and a whisky tasting with Sir David to celebrate the winner’s new ownership of the whisky. That event will be hosted in London by Stephen Rankin, who is Gordon & MacPhail’s director of prestige and the great-grandson of John Urquhart, who took ownership of the business in 1915.
An example of the previous release, a 75-year-old whisky bottled in 2015, sold at auction last September for a mere £16,000.