We want to look at the annual Feis Ile bottlings in detail in this article. The most expensive releases traded for more than five thousand Euros. Bunnahabhain accounts for the highest number of festival editions we track in our database. 

At the end of May each year, whisky and music enthusiasts gather on Islay to celebrate their passion for peated single malt whiskies. And each year, the distilleries come up with new special editions for the occasion. By the time of this writing, we are tracking 212 different Feis Ile releases in our database.
The above graph shows that Bunnahabhain and Bowmore issued the highest number of Feis Ile releases. Both distilleries dedicated almost 40 different whiskies to the festival. Laphroaig and Bruichladdich issued around 25 different bottlings each. The other active Islay distilleries released between 15 and 20 Feis Ile whiskies.
Around a quarter of all the Feis Ile bottlings we track have no age statement. We only display those above that offer some information about the time of maturation. The bulk of whiskies are aged between ten to twenty years, with the majority being around 12 years old.

Feis Ile Market

We observed more than 16.000 trades for these 200 Feis Ile bottlings. In the chart below, we see the number of trades per month all the way back to early 2011. Like the overall whisky market, the number of traded festival bottlings is constantly rising. While we hardly ever observed more than 100 trades per month five years ago, we now witness the high availability of these bottles on the market. Since early 2018, the monthly turnaround was consistently above the 200 bottles threshold.
You may have noticed the sudden spikes in the number of exchanged bottles. They all fall in the month of June, so right after the event took place. It seems like many festival visitors put their bottles straight into auction. In June 2018, we observed almost 700 trades of Feis Ile bottlings. This year, a little less than 600 bottles changed their ownership following the festival.

Outstanding Feis Ile Releases

We now want to point out some rather outstanding releases. To begin with, we take a look at the most expensive Feis Ile bottlings. By September 2019, the single most expensive trade we ever observed for a Feis Ile whisky was made for the Ardbeg Auriverdes Gold (Feis Ile 2014). In June 2017, we saw one of these 4,5-litre bottles sold for almost 5.300 Euros. The Ardbeg Fino Cask is another very costly festival whisky (Feis Ile 2005). We witnessed 26 trades for this Ardbeg single cask edition in the last eight years. In February 2019, the price went as high as 3.500 Euros, but it soon dropped to 2.700 Euros per bottle.
Next up, we look for the most traded releases. At the top of this list, we find the Lagavulin 16yo (Feis Ile 2017). Since June 2017, we observed no less than 688 bottles traded on the auction platforms we track. The prices bounced back and forth between 140 and 180 Euros, although they just recently scratched the 200 Euro mark. We witnessed more solid growth in value for the second most traded release, the Ardbeg (Feis Ile 2012). The 679 observations saw the price tag rise from below 200 Euros to more than 350 Euros, which equals a 90% increase in price over the past six years.

Do you have any Feis Ile bottlings in your whisky collections? Curious to find out how much those bottles traded for recently? Become a Whiskystats member for free and start tracking your collection now.

Disclaimer: the whisky market insights presented in this article are based on the Whiskystats database at the time of publication. Whiskystats is constantly adding new data, and therefore some charts and figures may not match after initial publication.