Earlier this week, two casks of whisky that were produced at the Japanese ghost distillery Karuizawa were auctioned off for a record-breaking sum, pulling in a stunning £4,250,000 (about $5.7 million) at Christie’s London. This represents a significant sale at a time when the global whiskey market is stumbling, perhaps proving the resiliency of the the secondary market when it comes to rare whiskies.

Karuizawa whisky has become a highly coveted prize among collectors. The distillery was founded in 1955 and produced whisky, most of which was aged in sherry casks, for nearly half a century until it was shuttered in 2000. Rare bottlings occasionally surface at auction, and some of them sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2017, for example, a bottle of Karuizawa 1960 52-year-old single malt, nicknamed the Wanderer, set a record when it sold for more than $141,000 at auction in Hong Kong. Another bottle called the Archer sold for more than $125,000 that same year. The distillery was revived a few years ago, but really in name only as the whisky produced at the new facility will obviously be very different.

It’s not unheard of for casks of whisky to be sold for extravagant amounts of money. In 2022, a cask of Ardbeg whisky distilled in 1975 sold to a private collector for £16 million (about $19 million), setting a new record at the time. The two Karuizawa casks (#6195 and #888) in question were distilled in 1999, a year before the distillery was mothballed, and each is expected to yield about 420 bottles. It’s pretty rare for entire barrels of whisky from the distillery to be up for auction, but these came from the private collection of Sukhinder Singh, the founder of the Whisky Exchange (he sold the website to Pernod Ricard in 2021). Singh acquired these casks in 2012 and has held onto them for years. “I am pleased with the result of the auction and look forward to working with the buyer on the next part of the journey of these casks,” he said in a statement. “Having owned, bottled, and enjoyed so many of the sister casks, has been a privilege and an amazing experience that I will never forget.”

“We are incredibly proud that these two extraordinary Karuizawa casks, that have been so carefully nurtured, have found new custodians,” added Adam Bilbey, global head of wine & spirits at Christie’s. “Full casks of Karuizawa are rarely seen, and their provenance from the private collection of Sukhinder Singh—one of the most respected figures in the world of rare whisky—made these even more special. This is a project that Christie’s has been honored to be involved with, and it is particularly thrilling to see the hammer come down on these record-breaking lots.”