The Breuer Building, an imposing Brutalist structure on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, about a half-mile from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the brand new home to Sotheby’s, the celebrated auction house. On the second floor, there are historic documents from the Printed Manuscript and Americana collection for an upcoming auction: political and personal letters signed by George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, a 1624 map of Virginia, a document that served as a blueprint for the Declaration of Independence.
But that is not the American history that people gathered to behold on a frigid Saturday night in January. The paddle-wielding crew were a chummy bunch, greeting each other like old friends. This was the bourbon community — familiar with one another from tasting events, online forums and, one can assume, other auctions. They’d arrived from far and wide — New York City and Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Boston — in the hopes of scoring a piece of the Great American Whiskey Collection. The event saw several record-breaking feats for the storied auction house.
The collection exceeded expectations by orders of magnitude. Estimated to sell for between $1.17 million and $1.68 million, it nearly doubled that with its sum total of US$2.5 million in sales, setting records for the most valuable single-owner American whiskey collection ever sold at auction and the most valuable single-owner spirits auction to ever take place in New York. Every one of the 360 bottles across 320 lots sold; 89 per cent fetched a price above its highest estimate, and 96 per cent of bottles went to U.S. households.
The record-shattering, much-hyped star of the show was Old Rip Van Winkle 20 Year Old Single Barrel “Sam’s.” It was estimated to go for between $70,000 and $100,000, but bidding quickly soared in giant increments from $120,000 to $130,000 to the final price of $162,500, making it the highest price tag for a single bottle of American whiskey sold at auction. Distilled in 1982, it clocked in at a tear-inducing 133.4 proof (66.7% ABV). It was bottle number 54 of 60 bottled for Sam’s, a liquor store in Chicago and almost certainly one of very few number of Van Winkle barrel picks remaining in modern times. Still, the sale pales in comparison to record-setting Scotch auctions. Consider The Macallan 1926 60 Year Old (Valerio Adami label), which fetched $2.71 million (£2.187 million) at Sotheby's London in November 2023.
Another scene-stealer also came from the storied family: Van Winkle 18 Year Old Special Reserve Single Barrel. The 121.6-proof (60.8% ABV) bourbon was bottled for Binny’s, another Chicago retailer. The gavel came down at $106,250. A Very Very Old Fitzgerald 18 Year Old “Blackhawk” also reached six figures, selling for $112,500. And there was much buzz about the bottles of Red Hook Rye, which were selected by LeNell Camacho Santa Ana for the eponymous Brooklyn liquor store she operated until 2009. (She now runs LeNell’s Beverage Boutique in Birmingham, Alabama.) As insiders are quick to tell you, the rye came from similar Willet stock as Doug’s Green and Black Ink, 22-year-old single-barrel ryes about which collectors and enthusiasts still swap stories and memories and aspirations.
“There’s been a trickling-in of great bottles through us and others over the years, but never all at once like this,” said Zev Glesta, Sotheby's whiskey specialist. “These are old, impressive bottles. We’re talking about liquid stored in wood that was cut from a tree 200 years prior. There’s so much story, myth and spirit to all of this. And having Julian Van Winkle on board was the cherry on top for the collection. It adds an extra layer of provenance.”
Indeed, the American whiskey patriarch appeared in Sotheby’s pre-auction digital materials. In a video available online, he notes that it’s the highest proof Van Winkle ever bottled and rhapsodizes about the bottles and their rarity and nostalgically recounts some stories about his father, like how he was the first to offer personalized labels to private bottlings. He recalls how there was a woman who’d do the calligraphy.
Perhaps what’s most notable is the modest origins of the most sought-after whiskies. They didn’t come on the market as an expression that was any more valuable than others.
“I was just trying to survive,” Julian Van Winkle said, noting that the barrel picks, like the one for Sam’s that fetched the record price, weren’t necessarily intended to be more expensive than anything else, just a strategy to provide more variety. “A lot of these bottles — I don’t remember, we just whipped them out left and right to stay in business. Back then, you could buy barrels easily because the bourbon business was down, so there was a lot of excess whiskey, like there is now. But the main thing about the bottles was the quality. I think that’s what people took notice of.”
Nonetheless, he marvels at how a strategic move to simply keep the distillery open became the ultimate extravagance. After all, he recalls, he was doing the pavement-pounding and going onto whiskey forums himself to plug the product to the bourbon community.
“When something like the whiskey for Sam’s comes out and increases value, it’s all like a dream — a good dream. It happened organically — it was nothing that I planned,” Van Winkle told us. “I wasn’t that smart to think in 47 years it’d be worth hundreds of thousands. I wish I kept more bottles than I have now. Our brand was always successful because of the people who buy it. They do selling. It's a word-of-mouth thing. Not making too much of anything also helps. People always asked me: Why not make more? Now I’ve been vindicated a little.”
There was some post-event chatter about the sale representing the health of and enduring enthusiasm for the American whiskey industry, which has struggled in recent years. It’s regularly reported that sales are down. Overstock has piled up to the point that massive distilleries owned by juggernauts like Suntory Global Spirits are pausing production for a year or more.
The American Whiskey Association put out a statement declaring “Record-Breaking Sotheby’s Auction Shatters Myth of American Whiskey’s Demise.”
“The narrative that American whiskey is somehow fading just doesn’t hold up,” Michael Bilello, president and CEO of the AWA, said in the statement. “A $2.5 million auction where nearly 90 per cent of lots beat expectations — driven in large part by buyers under 40 — tells a very different story. American whiskey is a premium product, fueled by craftsmanship, heritage, and consumer confidence. This isn’t a category in retreat; it’s one that continues to mature and gain momentum.”
Others, however, see the auction and the category overall as a false equivalence.
“I don’t think it says anything about the health of industry, or about the industry at all. I don’t think it’s a reflection of anything other than the fact that there are some objects that someone put a value on. It's self-perpetuating,” said Chuck Cowdery, author of Bourbon, Straight, who’s been known to shatter the proverbial rose-colored glasses any time they’re offered to him. “Most people who know anything about American whiskey know that Van Winkles aren’t all that special. The secondary market just so influential on the industry at large. But it’s important because it’s important to them, the collectors, but only important to them. It’s a very self-contained world. There are people who are perfectly happy with whiskeys only available to us and we’re not thinking we’re missing anything.”
