Auction house Bonhams is offering a full set of Hanyu Ichiro’s ‘Card Series’ of Japanese whiskies – the most expensive and rarest Japanese whiskies in the world.
The collection will be offered in Hong Kong during a sale on 16 August and has an estimate of HK$4.5 million – HK$6m (US$572,940-US$763,920 / £455,760-£607,620).
The full card series contains 54 bottles in total, each one containing spirit drawn from a single cask between 1985 and 2014 – the year the Hanyu distillery closed.
A full series was previously sold by Bonhams in 2015 for HK$3.7m, a record yet to be surpassed – in part because full sets are hard to find.
Daniel Lam, Bonhams’ director of Wine & Spirits, Asia, commented: “Four years since the Hanyu Ichiro’s Full Card Series set the world auction record at Bonhams, the current market demand is at its strongest for Japanese whisky.
“It is believed that no more than four sets of Full Card Series exist in the world. Over the years, moreover, many bottles have either been consumed or strictly kept in private, making it harder than ever to assemble a complete – and with such trusted provenance – series.”
