2 Bottles Of Rare Whiskey With Pittsburgh Roots Go At Auction For Almost $30,000

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Two bottles of a rare whiskey passed down through the Mellon family sold for a pretty nice sum at an auction -- $28,000 total.

A bottle of 1909 Overholt Rye was put up for both an in-person and online auction hosted by the Kentucky-based Speed Art Museum.

The museum says that as the bottle was about to go for $14,000, there was a twist.

At the last minute, a man donated a second bottle.

The whiskey, which comes from the Mellon family's estate, is extremely rare with only 28 bottles left.

The museum says a third of the Overholt distillery was once owned by Henry Clay Frick, the founder's grandson.

When Frick died in 1919, he passed the shares to Andrew Mellon, who they say became the distillery's majority owner.

The museum says before Prohibition in 1920, Mellon and his brothers stored the best barrels of rye from the previous 15 years.

The distillery was then passed to Richard Mellon Scaife, the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. According to the museum, in 2014, 60 cases of the Overholt Rye whiskey were found in a cellar.

A patron of the Speed Art Museum managed to get his hands on six cases and donated one bottle to the museum.

"A 1.5-ounce pour will set you back $1,250, and that's if you can even get it," bourbon expert Fred Minnick said in a press release.

"It has such a historic taste. They just don't make whiskey like that anymore."

The museum says the Overholt Rye is the "unicorn of whiskeys," which explains why two bottles went for nearly $30,000.