The estate of photographer Sam Shaw has teamed up with William Grant & Sons, a family-owned Scottish company founded in 1887, to produce the Ladyburn 2025 whiskey for the Distillers One of One charity auction – to be hosted by Sotheby’s at Hopetoun House in Edinburgh on October 10, The Drinks Business reports.
The single bottle has been drawn from Cask 102092, one of a handful of 1966 Sherry butts, and the decanter features Shaw’s photo of a smiling Marilyn sipping from a coffee cup in her suite at the St. Regis Hotel, after arriving in New York to shoot The Seven Year Itch in 1954.
Marilyn wore a fitted cream dress designed by Travilla for There’s No Business Like Show Business, and Shaw’s images of her greeting reporters at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) earlier that day are featured in a forthcoming book, Dear Marilyn, due for release on September 30.
And finally, while William Grant & Sons is based in North Lanarkshire, the birthplace of Marilyn’s Scottish ancestor, John Munro – in the Highland village of Tain, Ross-Shire – is home to the Glenmorangie distillery.
Munro fought for the Royalist cause during the English Civil War in the 17th century, and then was exiled to Colonial America by Oliver Cromwell’s regime. He is thought to have settled on what is now the state of Rhode Island, and a DNA sample acquired by Clan Munro USA has linked him to Marilyn’s maternal grandfather, Otis Elmer Monroe (1866-1909.)
UPDATE:
William Grant’s one of a kind, Monroe-themed Ladyburn whiskey has sold for £225,000, The Scottish Sun reports. The auction raised a total hammer price of £2.3 million with the entire proceeds primarily going to The Youth Action Fund.
The Marilyn Report 