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Bloke Who Forked Out £7,600 For Dram Of Whisky Finds Out It Was Fake

Bloke Who Forked Out £7,600 For Dram Of Whisky Finds Out It Was Fake

The Chinese tourist thought he was getting a taste of a 1878 Macallan single malt.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

We've all been there when you wake up with a particularly powerful hangover, check you bank balance, only to realise that it is a lot lower than what you thought. You might scroll through your account, seeing rounds of £50 and more and you can't work out why the hell you'd fork out that much for a few drinks.

Well, if you thought that is a nightmare, then thank your lucky stars you're not Zhang Wei.

Wei, who happens to be one of China's most popular fantasy writers, was in the Waldhaus Am See hotel in St Moritz, Switzerland, when he asked for a dram of an unopened bottle which claimed to be an 1878 Macallan single malt.

Mr Wei forked out a whopping £7,600 ($9,926) for a single dram.

via GIPHY

Just so we're clear, a dram is an eighth of a fluid ounce.

For comparison, a single shot of a spirit is usually one a half fluid ounces. So Zhang literally paid thousands of pounds for a little more than a sip of what he thought was damn fine whisky.

But when word spread of the Beijing man's purchase, experts came in thick and fast to see whether it was legit. Lo and behold, it wasn't.

According to the BBC, researchers at the University of Oxford did carbon dating tests and found there was a 95 percent probability that the spirit was created between 1970 and 1972.

To add salt to the wound, it wasn't even a single malt.

via GIPHY

Fife-based alcohol analysts Tatlock and Thomson ran some further tests and found it was about 60 percent malt and 40 percent grain.

Waldhaus manager Sandro Bernasconi has told the BBC: "My father bought the bottle of Macallan 25 years ago, when he was manager of this hotel, and it had not been opened.

"When Mr Zhang asked if he could try some, we told him it wasn't for sale. When he said he really wanted to try it, I called my father who told me we could wait another 20 years for a customer like that so we should sell it.

"Mr Zhang and I then opened the bottle together and drank some of it."

Mr Bernasconi flew to China to personally apologise and repay Mr Wei his money, adding: "When I showed him the results, he was not angry - he thanked me very much for the hotel's honesty and said his experience in Switzerland had been good."

Sources: BBC

Featured Image Credit: SWNS

Topics: World News, News, Fail, Feels, Hotel