i n search of forgotten bottles in backwater stores. Whisky auctions became common.
What does that mean to us, though? If you’re not flipping bottles, if you’re not ‘investing,’ if you’re not filling warehouses to sell to rarity-seekers...is it a disaster for you? Or is there opportunity in the chaos? Save your money, drink your hoarded whisky, and buy up the rarities on the drop when the glut hits? Probably not. But then, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become a person who’s more likely to settle down with a safely excellent bottle that no secondary marketer would look at twice. I like to try new whiskies, but I have never been a completist, or one who wants a new bottle just because it’s a new bottle. The relaxing, comfortable thing that flows from this is this: If disaster is looming, it’s one that will not affect me. Nothing in my life depends on the increasing value of a bottle of whisky that I’ll never open. The last time I checked the value of a bottle of whisky I had and found it was over $1,000? I chucked it in a suitcase, flew across the ocean, and opened it with friends. Because that’s what you do with whisky, not stick it in a vault.
Today? More change. Age statements have become currency as rare, old whiskies become rarer and older. More distilleries have opened, and the early ones are slowly releasing a flood of good whisky on the market. You might think that would mean lower prices, but prices continue to climb as more and more people start drinking whisky, and everyone wants to taste everything, price be damned. Auction prices continue to climb. Only yesterday I saw news of one bottle of Irish single malt selling for $2.8 million. (In a walnut presentation case, with a “custom timepiece” and a Fabergé egg, AND a pair of cigars...is this a whisky auction, or an odd lots sale?) And as auction prices soar, they inevitably drag the prices of shelf whiskies with them. Rarity is now deliberately manufactured by store picks, club picks, warehouse releases, batch numbers. Fear Of Missing Out has become a nightmare. Collectors look for monstrously rare bottles, are taken in by outrageous fakes, and money pours into the whiskysphere to no discernible end. “We make it to drink!” whisky makers used to cry, but I rarely hear that anymore. They might still be saying it, but they’re drowned out by the furious cha- CHING! of cash registers and beep-booping of electronic funds transfers. Disaster Seen As Catastrophe Looms... Are the rising prices a bubble that may be reaching the bursting point? We’ve been wondering about that for at least five years, and it hasn’t happened yet. The stock markets continue to climb, and as long as there’s more and more money to spend, the dance will go on. And there’s always the old joke that you can at least drink it if the price craters. But when warehouses are filled for no reason other than creating artificially rare whiskies to sell for managed prices, things seem to have advanced to another level. When bottles are sold, re-sold, and re-sold again, but never actually leave the auction house vaults, maybe you can hear the creaking of limits. When whisky forgery is a ten thousand dollar con instead of refilling bottles at a crooked dive bar, well, disaster...might indeed be looming.
PS We drank it all that night. Every last thousand dollar drop.
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the whisky explorer magazine
WINTER 2024
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