Whisky Auction Watch 4th May 2012

Andy Simpson gives us the very latest news on whisky investment…

Last Saturday saw a packed auction house at Taylors of Montrose. The south Aberdeenshire auctioneers hosted one of their regular wine and whisky auctions with over 500 lots moving swiftly under the hammer. A myriad of rare whisky culminated with both the 55 and the 57 year old Macallan Lalique decanters. The 55 year old sold for £7,800 and the 57 year old sold for £9,000.

There looked to be a collection of similar aged bottles from a variety of distilleries. Bottles of mid to late 1970’s whisky from Oban, Dalwhinnie, Talisker and Blair Athol (to name a few) sold for fair market value. The reason I’m mentioning this is they all had a very similar, quite poor, fill level at ‘High Shoulder’. It just highlighted the need to look after any bottles carefully if you want to keep them for a long period of time.

In order to preserve a bottles fill level and the overall condition of the labels, store bottles –

-          At room temperature (or as constant a temperature as possible)

-          Out of direct sunlight to prevent bleaching

-          Away from sources of damp

-          Standing upright rather than laying down (the strength of the alcohol in Whisky can corrode cork stoppers)

There were also some very rarely seen bargains with a brace of Macallan 1979 Gran Reserva bottles selling for less than £300. These have been achieving £400 – £450 recently so anything sub £300 is a great price for the buyer. It’ll be interesting to see if this was just a downwards spike or an indicator these bottles may start to see values easing.

Looking to this week, the main event is McTears whisky auction which sees an impressive array of old Cadenheads bottles up for auction. These old, discontinued bottles have been a major contributing factor to the recent surge in values for independent bottles. I’m looking forward to seeing if this trend continues, as usual, time will tell!