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00:03 It was just before Christmas, and I was in the cellars
00:16 doing some sorting out.
00:17 And in one of the back cellars, there
00:20 was a big door leaning against an opening.
00:24 And I shifted the door aside.
00:26 It wasn't on hinges or anything.
00:28 And behind it was this shelves of this wonderful kind
00:33 of dusty bottles.
00:35 And I didn't know what it was, and got the iPhone torch out.
00:40 And found this label, shelf label,
00:44 saying Blair Castle Whiskey, cast 1833, bottle of 1841.
00:50 And I did what anyone would do in my situation, which
00:54 was opened a bottle.
00:56 And tasted it with my family and the team here at the castle.
01:00 And we were instantly kind of blown away by its strength.
01:06 And the fact that it was, had kept all its purity
01:10 from that time.
01:11 It is got a sort of fiery medicinal quality,
01:15 I guess you'd say.
01:17 I'm not-- I'm an amateur enthusiast
01:19 when it comes to whiskey.
01:21 So I'm not the one to refer to for tasting notes.
01:23 But it's got a-- yeah, fiery and magical.
01:27 And the amazing thing about Blair Castle
01:29 is we've got these great archives here.
01:31 And Queen Victoria came to stay here for six weeks
01:34 with Prince Albert in 1844.
01:37 And her letters, notes, and the bin books
01:41 here refer to the royal party drinking what
01:44 we think is the same batch of--
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01:50 Whiskey was discovered here at Blair Castle a few months ago
01:54 with a purported distillation year of 1833, which
01:57 is obviously, by a long stretch, the oldest vintage ever
02:00 discovered and probably still in existence in the whiskey
02:03 world.
02:03 So somebody comes to you with a bottle like that,
02:05 it's obviously incredibly exciting.
02:07 But obviously, you have to do quite a lot of due diligence
02:09 to make sure that what you're about to auction is authentic.
02:13 So first thing we do is ask for provenance.
02:15 We're very fortunate here that Blair Castle has
02:17 an incredibly deep archive.
02:18 And they've kept a lot of incredibly useful records
02:21 over the years, which have shown the whiskey being here
02:24 in the castle.
02:24 It's shown the whiskey being in cask in the cellar.
02:27 There's details of the bottling date.
02:28 And there's even details of people
02:30 having been drinking it here at the castle as well.
02:32 So for this to have been distilled on the estate,
02:35 it's hardly moved in the 200 years that it's existed,
02:38 is incredibly fortunate.
02:41 Never seen anything as old and rare as this.
02:43 To try something that old, to try something
02:45 that can claim to be the oldest Scotch whiskey in the world
02:48 is a really special moment for anybody.
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