Whiskystats now tracks blended whiskies like Hibiki, Compass Box and Johnnie Walker. The secondary market for these brands is growing strongly. Here is our introduction to blends.
The addition of blends marks the next milestone for the Whiskystats project. We now track prices of around 35.000 different whiskies in our database. For these whiskies, we observed 485.000 trades. The unique thing about Whiskystats is that we do not only collect the raw price information, but we map them to the respective whiskies too. This is what enables you to track the value of your collections. And this is what allows us to analyze the movements of the market.
The Market
But first, let’s look at the sheer number of trades. The number of sold blends is constantly rising on the three auction platforms we currently track. About three years ago, we observed around 500 bottles per month. Since October 2018, the number of blends traded per round of auctions averaged more than 1.000 bottles.
This growth perfectly aligns with the overall growth of the whisky auction market. The relative share of blends traded each month is pretty constant and lies somewhere between 7% to 10%. The same is true for the observed trading volume, i.e. the summed prices of all the registered trades. Here the relative share of blends roughly lies between 3% and 6%. Consequently, the traded blends are cheaper than their single malt and bourbon counterparts.
In 2015, the total worth of all traded blends on the auction houses we track jumped above 50.000 Euros per month for the first time. In 2016 we reached 100.000 Euros quite regularly. Less than a year ago, this figure touched the 200.000 Euros threshold and only in November 2018 did we almost reach 300.000 Euros in a single round of auctions.
The Brands
We added no less than 171 different brands of blended whiskies. Thereby we can discriminate between the different bottlings of, e.g. Johnnie Walker and Suntory. To find out the most traded brands, we count the number of price observations. The Top 10 most traded blended whisky brands are displayed below.
When it comes to the number of traded bottles, Johnnie Walker is the top brand for blended whisky. Since 2011 we observed almost 7.000 Johnnie Walker bottles changing ownership. The second most traded blend brand is Hibiki, with slightly less than 4.000 price observations. Ballantine’s and Compass Box are tied for third place, each with around 1.600 trades. The Famous Grouse completes the Top 5.
Outstanding Blends
We now have a look at the most remarkable bottlings on the market. For this, we apply many different criteria. First, we look at the most traded expressions of blended whisky. With more than 750 trades, the Hibiki 17yo is our database’s single most traded blend. Prices climbed from below 100 Euros in 2014 to a decent 400 Euros per bottle today. Interestingly, in May 2018, bidders on all markets seemed to agree simultaneously that this whisky should trade for twice the price it did before.
Also, its little brother, the Hibiki 12yo, is highly sought after. Almost 500 trades saw the prices for this twelve-year-old expression rise from 60 Euros to more than 250 Euros. Other blends with around 450 trades are the Nikka Gold & Gold (Samurai), the Taketsuru 17yo Pure Malt and yet another Hibiki, the Hibiki 21yo.
We now turn our attention to the most expensive blends. Surprise, surprise, we stumble upon the next Hibiki releases. The Hibiki Arita Decanter and the Hibiki Kutani Decanter currently trade for around 16.000 to 17.000 Euros.
While not the best bargain and with a hefty decrease in hammer prices, we find the Johnnie Walker Jenson Button Signature Blend. Our first price observation was in May 2016 when someone paid 17.000 Euros. In 2017 and 2018, we observed this whisky three more times. Those trades ranged from 10.000 Euros to 11.000 Euros.
This leads us to the question: which blends experienced the highest increase in value? Compass Box completely dominates the list of the top-performing blended whiskies. Bronze, Silver and Gold all go to releases from this infamous scotch whisky blender. There is the Compass Box Hedonism (1st Edition). Before August 2015, this first Hedonism release traded for less than 200 Euros. This whisky disappeared from auctions reappearing only two months ago, in December 2018. But then it sold for more than 1.100 Euros, leaving its owners with a 660% increase in value within three years.
Then there is the Compass Box Canto Cask 50. They once traded for less than 100 Euros but are now selling for almost twenty times that price. In November 2018, a bidder at ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com was willing to pay nearly 2.000 Euros. We observed a similar price development for the Compass Box Eleuthera (Single Marrying Cask): 50 Euros in July 2011 and 720 Euros in October 2017, equalling a 1.340% increase in value over seven years.
You can now search our database for these blends and track their value by adding them to one of your collections.
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.