Aficionados have the opportunity to bid on an extremely rare bottle of Scottish whisky as a fundraiser for the Bermuda National Museum.Members of the public have until tomorrow to submit bids for a 1948 bottle of Macallan Whisky.Bidding starts at $8,888 the auction was arranged to honour the memory of Charles (Harry) Wilken, a Scotsman who was president of Jardine Matheson International.Mr Wilken’s friends organised for the whisky to be auctioned as part of a larger fundraising effort. They have so far raised $150,000 in his name for a gallery in the Queen’s Exhibition Hall at the Bermuda National Museum.“We set out to raise some funds in memory of Harry Wilken, who was my predecessor at Jardine Matheson, to leave a permanent memory of him in Bermuda because he loved the place,” said current Jardine president John Lang. “He died in 2010 at the age of 61. He was here for 15 years. We wrote to 150 of his friends to see if they would like to donate some money to the Bermuda National Museum in order to dedicate a gallery in the Queen’s Exhibition Hall.”They set out to raise $100,000 but instead raised $150,000. On Saturday, friends who made donations, will meet for a private party in Mr Wilken’s honour. Present will be many of the bands performing at today’s Highland Games organised by the Caledonian Society of Bermuda.“Harry was a great military enthusiast,” said Mr Lang. “He loved everything to do with boats, planes, trains and museums. He gave things to the Bermuda National Museum.”David Cox, of the Macallan Distillery in Scotland, was in charge of bringing the expensive bottle of whisky to Bermuda.A friend of Mr Lang’s, he admitted he spent the entire seven-hour plane ride, from London, England to Bermuda, afraid that something would happen to it. He worried that he would smell whisky when he opened his suitcase here. Luckily, the bottle arrived safely.“By extraordinary coincidence, Harry’s father, Charles Wilken, was company secretary of Macallan in Scotland from 1949 to 1989,” Mr Cox said. “John asked me if given the connection to Macallan and his friendship with me, we would look at donating something for the great cause that John had been talking about. I thought immediately if we could get something from the year of Harry’s birth, 1948, that would be the most fitting tribute from our side that we could pay in his memory. Fortunately, we did have a bottle of 1948 that was very rare. We are very fortunate at Macallan, because we have quite an extensive stock of very rare vintage Macallans.”The whisky up for auction was bottled at natural cask strength without chill filtration. It derives all of its colour naturally, from 53 years in the cask. It was only bottled for this event.A special label was drawn up for the bottle. It reads: ‘In memory of Charles Harry Wilken whose father Charles B Wilken was company secretary of Macallan from 1949 to 1989’. Also included on the label is the first verse of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.“Hopefully, someone on Saturday night will be prepared to dig deep,” said Mr Lang. “This is a unique bottle and there is only one of its kind in the world. It is a rare thing, and we are hoping some collector will be willing to bid over $8,888. It is possibly the most expensive bottle of whisky that Bermuda has ever seen.”Mr Cox said Macallan had a very solid reputation at auction for its rare bottlings.“We hold the world record probably for whisky at auction,” he said. “The world record was $460,000 for a bottle of single malt whiskey in a wonderful crystal decanter made by Lalique of France. That one was 64 years old and 1.5 litres. It was auctioned by Sothebys in 2010. All the money went to a charity.”Bidding ends tomorrow at 12pm. To collect your bidding card e-mail john.lang@jardines.com.