FANCY a nip of whisky at over £30 a shot?

An aficionado of rare whiskies with expensive tastes walked away from the Phillips art auction in Newport yesterday with a bottle of the finest Welsh whisky in his hand.

And with the bottle costing £1,350 the anonymous purchaser walked very, very carefully. The venerable malt was from the Welsh Whisky Distillery, Frongoch, near Bala, North Wales, and bottled 100 years ago. It was one of almost 1,000 lots at the first major art auction in Newport, and one of only three bottles known to exist.

The Scotch-style beverage was sold along with advertising memorabilia but failed to reach the reserve price of £1,500. Auctioneers had thought the ancient beverage might go for as much as £2,500.

"It didn't go for quite as much as we expected, but we are sure it made the lucky buyer very, very happy," a spokesman said.

For about a year collectors from around the world have been turning their attention to the wealth of Welsh art, and the Newport auction at Tredegar House was planned to capitalise on that market.

By late yesterday afternoon an upward trend in the value of Welsh paintings was already discernible. "It might be a little early in the day to say, but the Welsh landscapes are holding up very well," said Phillips Press officer Judith Holroyd.

The huge car park outside Tredegar House was jammed for the sale, which brought potential purchasers from all over Wales and beyond.

The Harper's Workshop, by Arthur Miles, a watercolour signed by the artist which had a reserve price of £500, sailed past its bracketed price and went for £1,000.

Other Welsh works, such as Cornelius Pearson's Pembroke Castle, which had a reserve price of £400, actually went for £550, indicating buoyant sales in the lower and middle ranges.

But as the day wore on, all the speculation was about what the Sir Kyffin Williams pictures, with price tags of up to £8,000, might fetch.

At Sotheby's, a year ago, the art world was taken by surprise as the Anglesey artist, who specialises in rugged Welsh landscapes, saw his work treble, or in some cases quadruple, in value.