Another silent distillery that consistently achieves astonishing prices at auction is the Japanese distillery Karuizawa. De-commissioned in 2000, it was originally designed to make whiskies for blending, but these days you won’t find its broad-shouldered, heavilysherried single malts selling for much under £4,000 – many times that for the very top expressions. Limited-edition Lalique decanters and artist labels may be pooh-poohed by whisky anoraks, but they can also add a big premium to the price – a rare Macallan 1926 60-year-old with a label by pop artist Sir Peter Blake sold for £615,000 at Bonhams in Edinburgh earlier this year. When it comes to style, rich, sherried single malts like the aforementioned Macallan (which accounts for around a third of all whisky sold at auction) are very much in vogue right now, says Fowle. But peaty whiskies such as Laphroaig and Ardbeg are also picking up. And as the number of collectors increases, so too does the number of really incredible collections coming up for sale. Bonhams Hong Kong sold a remarkably rare, complete set of 54 Hanyu Ichiro ‘Playing Card’ Japanese single malts to a female collector in August for HK$7,192,000 (£755,000), achieving a new world record. Scotch and Japanese whisky still dominate the market. But other whisky nations are starting to cut through. ‘Midleton Very Rare from the Midleton Distillery in County Cork is doing really well,’ reports Sukhinder Singh, founder of both The Whisky Exchange (thewhiskyexchange.com) and the auction site whisky.auction. Mature American rye whiskies from the likes of Van Winkle and Sazerac are also highly collectible. If you want to think big there’s also whisky by the cask. Rare Whisky 101 are specialists in this area – last year they brokered or sold almost a thousand casks with prices ranging from £1,500 to almost £800,000. Investing in a
FROM ABOVE: Silent distillery Brora is much in demand; Karuizawa Japanese single malts fetch top prices via The Whisky Exchange; a rare ‘Peter Blake’ 1926 Macallan 60-year-old fetched £775,000 at Bonhams Hong Kong and £615,000 in Edinburgh; Andy Simpson and David Robertson at Rare Whisky 101 are the names to know for casks; Midleton Very Rare flies the flag for Irish whiskey
cask with friends may sound fun, but the vagaries of maturation are unpredictable. Don’t risk it unless you really know your stuff. If you’re dipping your toe in for the first time, Jonny Fowle recommends the whiskies of Highland distillery Glendronach. ‘Its core range as well as limited vintage statements have been making major waves over the last few years and offer a comparatively accessible entry point for those beginning their collection.’ Japan’s Chichibu distillery is another rising star. A 200-bottle run of Chichibu Imperial Stout Cask was released by The Whisky Exchange earlier this year at £199 a bottle, and within just 24 hours it was on auction sites selling for nearly ten times that. But investing isn’t without risks. Quality goes up and down over the decades, styles change and distilleries close, factors which can all impact a whisky’s value. So it pays to do your research – or get an expert to do it for you – before you buy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, counterfeiting has become more of a problem as the market has grown. So be sure to take expert advice if you don’t want to be lumbered with a fake, and only go with a reputable auctioneer. Not everyone is mad about the way the whisky market is going – cut-throat competition for bottles means many of the top drams are now priced far beyond the reach of most whisky consumers. Among aficionados, buying to invest rather than to drink is often still thought to be taboo. ‘Some people buy purely on investment potential, some just based on the packaging, but in the end what you’ve got to buy on is the quality of the liquid,’ says Singh. ‘That way, if the market crashes, you will still have something amazing to drink, even when the money’s gone.’ n November 2019 | COUNTRYANDTOWNHOUSE.CO.UK | 81
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