US bar Serving World’s Oldest Japanese Whiskey at an Exorbitant Price
This picture shows Japan’s liquor giant Suntory’s chief blender, Seiichi Koshimizu (L), tasting 50-year-old single malt whisky while Suntory’s vice president and master blender, Shingo Torii, displays its bottle before a cask barreled in 1953 as Suntory unveils Japan’s most expensive whisky “Yamazaki 50-year” on May 11, 2005, at a Tokyo hotel. A bar in Hawaii is offering the chance to taste Yamazaki 55. (Photo: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP via Getty Images)
A bar in Honolulu, Hawaii, is offering patrons the opportunity to taste the world’s oldest Japanese whiskey at an event this Friday and Saturday — at a hefty price of $25,000 a person.
The bottle — Yamazaki 55 — is the world’s oldest Japanese whiskey, according to Justin Park, head bartender and owner of Bar Leather Apron, which is hosting the event. Only 100 bottles of Yamazaki 55 were released by Beam Suntory.
The event is being held at Bar Maze, Bar Leather Apron’s sister restaurant. It will include a tasting led by a Suntory brand ambassador and a dinner. $5,000 from each ticket will be donated to charities Aloha United Way and Hawaii Community Foundation.
“So a bottle like this Yamazaki 55 year goes for roughly $60,000 retail,” Park told Hawaii News Now. “That’s if you’d ever find it retail, which you would never would. So at auction these bottles, the last time I checked, went for $780,000 for a single bottle.”
Indeed, Dutch airport store ExQuisite is currently auctioning off a bottle of the stuff, and bids currently are at $788,000 with a couple of days left.
Meanwhile, online Japanese whiskey retailer Dekanta has a bottle of Yamazaki 55 available online for $950,000.
Bar Leather Apron is the first establishment in Hawaii to acquire a bottle of Yamazaki 55.
Here at Whiskey Raiders, we do more than write about current events in whiskey. We are the only media property reviewing whiskeys and aggregating the scores and reviews of other significant voices in the whiskey world in one place. If you’re interested in getting a shot of whiskey in your morning email, sign up for our Daily Dram Gram!
This post may contain affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site. This helps support Whiskey Raiders at no additional cost to you.
Follow Whiskey Raiders:
