A BOTTLE of 60-year-old whisky has sold for a world record of almost £850,000.

The Macallan Valerio Adami 1926 — dubbed the Holy Grail of whisky by connoisseurs — topped the previous best by £35,000.

The UK-based seller had picked up the rare bottle direct from the Macallan distillery for £4,000 in 1994.

They knew it to be rare but decided to sell when another bottle of the spirit sold for £814,081 — the record at that time — in Hong Kong in May. It was bought by a private telephone bidder from Asia during the auction by Bonhams in Edinburgh yesterday.

The auctioneers’ whisky specialist Martin Green said: “I am delighted at this exceptional result. It is a great honour to have established a new world record, and particularly exciting to have done so here in Scotland — the home of whisky.

"Bonhams now holds the record for the three most valuable bottles of whisky sold at auction.”

The whisky is described as being 60 years old, as it was created in 1926 and bottled in 1986. Macallan commissioned pop artists Valerio Adami and Peter Blake to design labels for a limited edition of 24 bottles — 12 Adami and 12 Blake.

The bottle, right, sold yesterday for £848,750 was numbered five in the sequence of 12 Adamis, but it is not known how many of the others still exist.

One is said to have been destroyed in an earthquake in Japan in 2011 and it is believed at least one bottle has been opened and drunk.

Martin said of the whisky: “Its exceptional rarity and quality puts it in a league of its own, and the world’s most serious whisky collectors will wait patiently for many years for a bottle to come on to the market.”