A DRAM of vintage Scotch reputed to be the world's most expensive whisky has been exposed as a fake.
Laboratory tests found the dram bought by a Chinese millionaire in a Swiss hotel bar for £7,600 after suspicions arose about Scotch's provenance.
Analysts from Scotland were called in by the Waldhaus Am See hotel in St Moritz after experts questioned the authenticity of the 2cl shot.
It had been purported to have been poured from an unopened bottle labelled as an 1878 Macallan single malt.
However, analysis found that it was almost certainly distilled after 1970.
The hotel said it had accepted the findings and reimbursed the customer in full.
Zhang Wei, 36, from Beijing - one of China's highest-earning online writers - had paid just under 10,000 Swiss francs - £7,600 - for the single shot while visiting the hotel's Devil's Place whisky bar in July.
Concerns surfaced soon after the purchase, when whisky industry experts spotted discrepancies in the bottle's cork and label from newspaper articles.
That prompted the Waldhaus to send a sample to Dunfermline-based specialists Rare Whisky 101 (RW101) for analysis.
Carbon dating tests were then carried out by researchers from the University of Oxford, which suggested a 95 per cent probability that the spirit was created between 1970 and 1972.
Further lab tests by Fife-based alcohol analysts Tatlock and Thomson indicated that it was probably a blended Scotch, comprising 60 per cent malt and 40 per cent grain - ruling it out as a single malt.
RW101 said the tests had shown that the bottle was "almost worthless as a collector's item".
Had the bottle been genuine, it would have carried a bar-value of about 300,000 Swiss francs - £227,000.
David Robertson, RW101 co-founder, above, said: “The Waldhaus team have done exactly the right thing by trying to authenticate this whisky."
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