During a recent lunch at Eleven Madison Park, I sipped, from my Bordeaux-style glass, a liquid that glowed with the deep amber tints of a great old Sauternes. But that glow emanated from a great old single-malt Scotch whisky — 42 years old, to be exact. As I tilted my glass toward the midday sunlight, glints of pure black flashed amidst the amber. That darkness, atypical in a whisky, had been noticed as it aged in a barrel at the Bowmore distillery on the Scottish island of Islay. That’s how it earned its name: Black Bowmore.

Atypical, too, is the price of this third and final release of Black Bowmore, arriving at Park Avenue Liquor Shop (parkaveliquor.com) on March 1: $4,500. That sky-high tab lifts Black Bowmore into the league of the most prized Bordeaux and Burgundies. The ultimate trophy from the great 2005 vintage in Bordeaux, for example, Château Petrus, currently carries the same price as this single malt.

Like Petrus, Bowmore Black’s price is partly due to its rarity. Just five casks were lain down in a seaside cellar following distillation in 1964. A first release of 2,200 bottles in 1993 was priced at about $100 a bottle. In 1994 and again the following year, two more lots of 2,000 bottles were offered at $200 a bottle. As single-malt fanatics took the measure of Black Bowmore’s superb quality, its price in the secondary market rose steeply. Last December at Christie’s, in the first spirits auction held in New York since Prohibition ended, a trio of the original Black Bowmore releases sold for an eye-popping $18,000. Of this final release of 824 bottles of the “42-year-old” (whisky age is calculated from the year of distillation to the year of bottling — in this case, age is calculated between 1964 and 2006), the lion’s share was allotted to Europe and Asia, leaving a mere 80 bottles for American customers, of which at least a dozen will be allotted to New York retailers. “Buy it now, and in a decade it will be worth $10,000,” a Rhode Island liquor retailer who specializes in single malts, Elliott Fishbein, said. “Most buyers will never drink it. They’re collectors who will resell it.”

What’s so special about Black Bowmore? As with the select few wines that gain glory as they age, this whisky was so intriguingly aromatic that at first I was content to “drink” it with my nose. Trying to parse its panoply of aromas was as hard (for me, anyhow) as it would be to deconstruct the burnished sound of a Brahms symphony. The one clear-cut note was peat smoke — not a surprise, since the barley malt from which the whisky is made is dried on a mesh surface under which Islay peat smolders. “The fellow who used to dig the peat for us was paid in whisky,” Bowmore’s senior blender and my tablemate, Iain McCallum, said with a twinkle. “He’s dead now, but he’s the best preserved corpse you could ever expect to see.”

Asked what made Black Bowmore outshine other single malts from the same distillery, Mr. McCallum explained: “It comes down to the cask. The same distilled spirit will turn out differently depending on the cask.” Traditionally, Scotch is aged in casks used for either sherry or bourbon. The spirit destined to become Black Bowmore went into Williams & Humbert casks from Spain marked “Walnut Sherry.” The synergy between spirit and wood, Mr. McCallum admits, defies chemical analysis: Instead of drying out and withering with prolonged barrel aging, Black Bowmore steadily gained depth and nuance from these particular sherry barrels. “Some things we don’t understand,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s magical.”

Something about the warming aspect of Scotch makes the outdoors beckon on a winter day. Surely, that’s why hip flasks were invented. I didn’t have a hip flask, but I did excuse myself from the table and, with glass in hand, slipped out of the restaurant and across the street into Madison Park. Being coatless, I was chilly, but the intense and rounded whisky, taken in tiny sips, spread its warmth. As I savored the long, echoing finish of a tiny sip, a squirrel boldly climbed up on the iron fence not two feet from me and stared expectantly. “Squirrel,” I muttered, “this Scotch is not for you. Go find an acorn.” Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was a frowning city park ranger. Drinking alcohol in the park was illegal, he said. I could feel a summons coming. “Officer, this is a very special whisky,” I said. “I know you’re not allowed to taste it, but you might want to smell something that costs $4,500 per bottle.” I handed the officer the glass. He inhaled and smiled benignly.

“Now, that’s special,” he said. “You head back into the restaurant before my partner comes along and gives you a summons.”

“Thank you,” I said. And thank you, Black Bowmore, for your unexpected power of persuasion.