Royal Salute, the luxury Scotch whisky brand within the Chivas Regal portfolio, has launched the world’s most expensive line of Scotch whisky, which is priced at $200,000 per bottle, excluding taxes. Called “Tribute to Honour,” the limited edition whisky pays homage to the Tribute to Honours, which are the crown jewels of Scotland and the oldest crown jewels of the British Isles.
Royal Salute spared no expense in commissioning an appropriate bottle for the rare whisky. Each of the handcrafted black porcelain flagons are encrusted with 413 flawless black and white diamonds—22 carats in total—that were handset in silver and gold.
World-renowned jewelry designer, Stephen Webster, Creative Director of London-based jeweler, Garrard, designed the limited edition of 21 bottles. As the bottles needed to be encrusted with jewels, the manufacturing process of the bottles was extremely complicated. Aeronautical engineers were consulted upon during the design process and Revol, a French porcelain manufacturer, needed to produce 400 bottles just to find 21 perfect examples.
Not only are the bottles physically impressive, but each contains a blend of some of the rarest whiskies in the world. Each of the whiskies is at least 45 years old and all come from the Royal Salute Vault at Strathisla,, the famous distillery in Scotland. The whiskies that were used are so rare and in such limited supply, that only Colin Scott, Royal Salute’s Master Blender for the past 21 years, has actually tasted the blend, which he created.
“Chivas Brothers has a phenomenal archive of high-aged whiskies, some of which, after decades of careful maturation, have acquired a rich intensity and deep concentration of sumptuous characters,” says Scott. “It is these very few whiskies which I have personally selected to compose Tribute to Honour—this opulent and rarest of blends.”
Each bottle is individually numbered. Since one of the limited edition bottles will be retained for the Royal Salute collection at Strathisla, only 20 are available for purchase. Buyers of the limited edition will each receive a small bottle of the whisky so they can taste it without having to open their flagons.
“This has been almost three years in the making,” says Neil Macdonald, Royal Salute’s Global Brand Director. “This is the richest, rarest whisky and we needed a worthy way of presenting it. It was a labor of love.”
