Many Ways To Invest In Whisky

Bottles, casks, independents and funds – there are many ways to invest in whisky.

- Vic Toria Burrows

Last month, Scottish distillery Bowmore released 25 bottles of its 1964 Black Bowmore single malt whisky in partnership with classic British carmaker Aston Martin at a price of £50,000 (S$89,654) a bottle. It might seem like a pretty penny, but it’s a mere fraction of the record-breaking figure of a Macallan 1926 60-year-old that sold in 2019 for £1.45million. That’s £50,000 a dram, mind you.

Black Bowmore was first bottled in 1993, with about 6,000 bottles having been released since then. It has become probably the most sought-after Islay whisky. The new release, Black Bowmore DB5 1964, comes in a bottle made from an adapted Aston Martin cylinder.

“It’s remarkable that a whisky originally priced at around £100 at retail in the mid-’90s is now achieving tens of thousands of pounds at our spirits auctions,” says Jonny Fowle, Sotheby’s spirits specialist. “This increase in value can be attributed to its undeniable quality and, now that so many have been consumed, its newfound rarity.”

The world of whisky has been one of the superlatives for at least a decade. According to the 2020 Knight Frank Wealth Report, the value of rare whisky has risen by 564 per cent over the last 10 years. In comparison, the value of classic cars rose by 194 per cent, fine art by 141 per cent and wine by 120 per cent.

For whisky lovers, or for those wanting to diversify their asset portfolio, there are many ways to reap the hopefully rich (but, of course, never guaranteed) rewards of investing in the “water of life” – or “uisce beatha”, as Irish monks in the early Middle Ages called it.

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