We Want the Truth About the $10,000 “Fake” Macallan

Like many whisky lovers, Professor Gordon Cook of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center would love to get his hands on some Macallan 1878 27 year old. Yet he has no intention of putting it in his mouth. The whisky recently captured a lot of attention when a Chinese multi-millionaire reportedly paid 9,999 Swiss francs ($10,000) for the dram at the Hotel Waldhaus am See in St. Moritz, Switzerland. What’s even more surprising than the exorbitant price: the whisky maj be a fake.

The vintage bottle’s label raised suspicion with the words, ‘Roderick Kemp. Proprietor, Macallan and Talisker Distilleries Ltd.’—an...