Jean-Baptiste Leonis was the 20th Century banker, builder and wine and liquor merchant who is credited with the founding of Vernon, California.
This is a man who loved whisky and would not accept any efforts at its prohibition. When he sensed that his precious whisky may be prohibited, he commissioned the construction of secret faults both his home and the retreat in Little Tujunga Canyon.
The whisky faults were secured with heavy metal doors which would only be opened using combination locks.
He stock piled booze for the period of scarcity and these bottles of whisky were only discovered in 2017 after his grandson (Leonis C. Malburg) died.
The Yahoo Finance reported that “The most expensive bottle of whisky was just sold in an auction in Edinburgh, Scotland. The 60-year-old bottle of Macallan Valerio Adami fetched a world-record price of $1.1 million at a Bonhams’ whisky sale Wednesday. ”
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The whisky in question is reported to have been distilled in 1926 but bottled in 1986. Telegraph newspaper reported that the buyer is a whisky connoisseur who is based in United Kingdom but was in Italy when the hammer came down.
The stash of 40 cases of bonded whisky has never been opened since it was bottled between 1908 and 1930s. Lots of Hermitage whisky pints was distilled circa 1914.
The expensive vintage booze is quickly becoming a booming business in many parts of the world.
The prohibition for sale of alcohol was informed by campaigns led by women in 1820s where they argued that “alcohol was a destructive force in families and marriages.”
The wave of evangelical Protestantism of 20th Century bolstered the the evils of whisky or alcohol. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared a seasonal ban on booze in the name of saving grain for food production during the Second World War.
Three years later, the Congress banned the production, sale, importation of liquor for human consumption.
There was one problem: enforcement was difficult and as a result it led to trading of booze in the black market.
This means that effectively booze was banned in the United States of America between 1920 and 1933. This is what led to stockpiling of whisky for over hundred years thanks to the 13th Amendment.
Paying millions of dollars for a bottle of whisky is not something new. Most recently, a bottle of booze was sold at $1.53 million at Christie’s In London. This has broken the world record so far.
