The Daily Records Nätupplaga:
WHISKY BEHIND BARS Nov 19 2004
Rare dram locked in police cell
By Donna Watson
A BATCH of rare whisky worth £500,000 had to be kept in a police cell after insurers refused to underwrite it.
Bosses at an island distillery had to turn to the boys in blue after their insurance company refused to cover the precious spirit once it was removed from its casks and put into bottles.
There are only 500 bottles of the 1964 Bruichladdich whisky and insurers said it was too big a risk to leave them at the plant on Islay while they were waiting to be shipped to the mainland.
So distillery bosses enlisted the help of Islay's three police officers who put the cases into the island's only cell, at Port Ellen, until they could be shipped the next day.
Mark Reynier, managing director of Bruichladdich, said: 'We are very grateful to the police for getting us out of a fix.
'While there was little chance of anything happening to this precious cargo, I would not have been able to sleep easily - after all, this whisky is irreplaceable.'
A police insider said:'Crime is not a big problem on Islay but you can see why the insurance company wouldn't be happy with half a million pounds worth of whisky lying about in boxes.
'It's a change for the cell to be used in this way - whisky stored there is usually inside people,not bottles.'
The whisky is the oldest - and most expensive - batch of Bruichladdich ever.
After spending 40 years in three casks, the entire batch was bottled in one day.
Most of the bottles have already been reserved by connoisseurs across the world but some are to be sold on the internet.
Med tanke på priset,
är den nog lite väl "häftig"
som andelswhisky
. 
