56 Whisky Magazine | Issue 167
O
ne thing immediately
became clear upon
entering the venue: this is
not the launch of just any
old whisky book. Many of
the attendees had realised this as well,
dressing up in full traditional Keepers
Ǥβ
in from abroad and it almost felt as if at
least someone should’ve been appointed
designated survivor to safeguard the
whisky industry in case disaster struck.
Instead, all of them had come
together at Scotch Whisky International
(SWI), the Dutch whisky investment
company that bought Valentino
Zagatti’s world famous whisky
collection a few years back for an
β
Ǥ
The launch of The Unseen Valentino
Zagatti Collection, an impressive and
unparalleled book, is what had lured
them to the headquarters of SWI in
Sassenheim, a small Dutch city not far
from Amsterdam. “I was so incredibly
happy when we bought the collection,”
says Michel Kappen, CEO of SWI. “The
whisky industry knows many reputable
people with funds at their disposal.
I didn’t expect to end up owning this
collection, but at some point it became
clear that I would be able to get
Zagatti’s collection to the Netherlands.”
The collection counts about 3,000
bottles and is currently proudly
displayed in a museum in the
Netherlands, built by SWI. Previously,
the bottles lined the walls of the modest
Italian home of Valentino Zagatti,
who lost his eyesight at age 11 due to
a stray landmine from World War II.
Zagatti started collecting whisky in
1958 from the money he saved after he
quit smoking. “In the decades after the
war Italy became the most important
market for malt whisky,” explains
ǤDzβ
magazine in the world was published
in Italy in 1986. An entire page was
β
whisky in Zagatti’s collection.”
ǡβ
prepared to pay more than a million
pounds for a single bottle of whisky.
But the main difference between
modern collectors and the early Italian
collectors is that they did not buy
whisky for investment purposes.
Around the turn of the century,
Zagatti released two books about his
collection, both of which turned into
collector’s items themselves. The books
WORDS THIJS KLAVERSTIJN
Whisky royalty gathered in the Netherlands last year for the launch of what is
likely to be the most comprehensive whisky book ever
These pages,
clockwise from top
left picture:
Inside one of the
volumes; The
full collection;
Scotch Whisky
International’s
offices; The whisky
great and good at
the launch.
The unseen collection
also found their way to Michel Kappen.
“When it was still in Italy, I often
visited the collection of Valentino,” says
Kappen. “Comparing the collection to
the books published by Zagatti, I wasn’t
completely convinced that they were
one hundred percent accurate. If we,
as Scotch Whisky International, want
to present one of the oldest whisky
collections to the world, then it needs to
be perfect. That’s why I’ve asked Hans
and Becky Offringa to help. I wanted
every bottle in the Zagatti collection
documented in great detail.”
For Hans and Becky, it turned into the
greatest challenge of their professional
life. It took two years for The Unseen
Valentino Zagatti Collection to come
ǡ
β
spanning 1,500 pages and weighing
15 kilos. Diageo’s Dr. Nicholas Morgan
said: “The challenge to write a book
like Hans and Becky have done is truly
remarkable. My publisher has given me
three and a half years for the book I’m
currently working on, and even that
feels like a short amount of time. It’s
impressive for Hans and Becky to have
done what they did in just two years.”
The Unseen Valentino Zagatti
Collection is a chronological
Collections Valentino Zagatti
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