The top five distilleries are losing ground. Islay whiskies are performing well while the rise of Campbeltown releases came to an abrupt halt. Here is the price update for April 2019.
In the last month, we recorded 11.669 whisky bottles changing ownership. Our whisky database now holds 526.000 price observations of more than 36.000 thousand different whiskies. Macallan accounts for around 9,5% of the whole market. Bruichladdich, Highland Park and Springbank all top Ardbeg when it comes to the number of trades.
Major Index Movements
Our Whiskystats Whisky Index remains at around 207 index points as it only moved up slightly by 0,7% in April 2019. The same is true for our Fab50 collection. The fifty included bottles currently have a market value of around 121.000 Euros. Far more movements can be observed when we look at our monthly updated distillery ranking.
All of our currently top-five ranked distilleries, displayed in the graph above, lost index value. Rosebank lost its leading position to Karuizawa as its index dropped by 6,8%. Macallan continues its downward movement as our index again gave way by more than 4%. Since September 2018, the most traded Macallan bottlings lost almost 15% in value.
On the other side we find the rest of our top 10 ranked distilleries which indices all gained last month. Brora redeemed itself after that massive loss in March 2019 as its index now gained 3,5%. Ardbeg accounts for the best performance among our top 10 ranked distilleries. This Islay based distillerie´s index climbed by 5% which further secured its belonging to the top 10.
Our region indices indicate the strong performance of all Islay distilleries. Since November 2018, our Islay index has gained 17,4%. We also see that the growth of Campbeltown, which separated itself from the Islands, came to a halt. Further up, our Speyside index is struggling due to dropping Macallan prices.
Market Ambiguity
As mentioned in our price update for March 2019, the Game of Thrones releases dominated the market in the last round of auctions. While the Lochnagar House Baratheon release was the most traded whisky of this month, the Clynelish House Tyrell bottling caught our attention. The corresponding 81 price observations averaged 160 Euros. Upon further investigation, we note huge differences between the different auction houses. At ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com (SWA, brown dots), prices levelled at around 100 Euros. At the same time, at WhiskyAuctionner.com (WAE, orange dots), the cheapest trade was 268 Euros.
But we have other examples of this apparent market inefficiency. Also, there is the Oban Night’s Watch release from the Game of Thrones series. Here, prices at WhiskyAuction.com went as low as 61 Euros, while those at WhiskyAuctioneer.com started at 153 Euros. And it is not only the recent Game of Thrones releases. The Glenlivet Cipher, which we have tracked since June 2016, experienced a similar pattern. At WhiskyAuction.com, you could get a bottle for as little as 80 Euros, while at the same time, at WhiskyAuctioneer.com, you had to spend 191 Euros.
The above is clear evidence that more market participants should consider a Whiskystats membership. If you are already a Whiskystats member, do not forget to check the latest changes in the value of your personal whisky 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.