A bottle of what was purported to be a very rare single malt whisky has been found to be a fake.

The bottle of The Macallan, supposedly dating from 1878, had been kept unopened at the whisky bar of the Waldhaus Am See hotel in St Moritza, Switzerland for 25 years. Earlier this year Chinese millionaire Zhang Wei paid £7,600 for the bottle to be opened and for a measure to taste, which he did with the hotel’s manager, Sandro Bernasconi.. According to Mr Zhang, 36, he enjoyed both the good taste and the sense of drinking some 139 year old history.

Sadly when experts investigated the bottle they found it was a fake, being a blend of malt and grain whiskies bottled in the 1970’s. Had the bottle been genuine it would have been worth around £227,000, or around £8,000 a measure.

Since the whisky was proved to be a worthless fake Bernasconi flew to China to give Mr Zhang his money back.