Is there a fair way to sell limited-edition whiskies?

When it emerged that we would be selling a special charity bottling of Lagavulin we were very excited, not only because it’s great to be involved with such a distinguished distillery, but also because all proceeds received by Diageo would be split among seven Islay charities.

Firstly, some context. We had 522 bottles of the 1991 Lagavulin, so we held three ballots in which we drew customer email addresses at random then contacted them to find out if they wished to buy a bottle. After three ballots, we still had 109 bottles remaining, so we contacted all remaining customers who...