Time flies by as this is the 24th Whiskystats monthly price update! Our Ardbeg index stagnates after two years of solid growth. Macallan is back on track and the 16yo Lagavulin Feis Ile bottling is again the most traded whisky.

It was two years ago when we published the Whiskystats Price Update for September 2015. In every month ever since we released a short market recap. These updates serve as a small heads-up on what happened recently on the market. Back then we added around 1.500 new price observations which affected 1.100 different whiskies.
 
In August 2017 we added more than 4.000 prices which affected almost 2.500 whiskies in our whisky database. With these new observations we also added 211 new single malts for which we track prices from now on. Like in September 2015, the three most traded single malt regions are Islay, Speyside and the Highlands. Back then, the most traded distilleries were Ardbeg, Port Ellen and Bruichladdich. Today these are Macallan, Ardbeg, Highland Park and Glendronach. You will find more details in our auot-generated Monthly Summary.
After our Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) reached it´s all-time peak of 344 index points in June 2017, it lost 1,5% in July. It now gained another 1,1% to stand at little less than 343 points. For all not-so-frequent Whiskystats readers, the WWI describes the value development of the currently 300 most traded single malt whiskies.

Distillery Movements

We now turn our attention to our monthly updated Distillery Ranking. Within the top ten distilleries we only see one positional change. Miyagikyo overtook Ardbeg to now stand at the 10th place. Consequently, Ardbeg is no longer among the top 10 performing distilleries.

In 2014, the currently 100 most traded Ardbeg bottlings gained 13% in value. In 2015 it were 15,6% and in 2016 14,4%. From January to March 2017 these bottles continued to gain 2,3%. Ever since the achieved prices for these bottlings stagnated.
On top of our distillery ranking is of course Macallan. In our article about the Grand Macallan Price Rally of 2016 we already described how the 100 most traded Macallans dramatically increased in value from the end of 2015 to early 2017. However, from February to April 2017 the same bottles lost almost 8%. But since then prices again started to climb which brought our Macallan index to a new peak at almost 517 index points.

Most Traded

Like in July 2017, the single most traded whisky of this month was the Lagavulin 16yo Feis Ile 2017 bottling. We observed 34 trades in August and in total 109 trades within the last three months. For the first time we now also see trades at Germany based WhiskyAuction.com (WA). A look at the single price observations shows that bidders at WA (yellow dots) were clearly willing to pay more for this Lagavulin than those at ScotchWhiskyAuction.com (SWA, red dots).
The second most traded single malt of the month was the Arran Smugglers Series Volume Three.The 24 observed trades averaged to 218 Euros. Also among the most traded whiskies are the Yamazaki Limited Edition 2016 and 2017 as well as another Feis Ile bottling, the Bowmore 11yo Feis Ile 2017.

Comeback of the Month

We here want to point out some single malts which haven’t been traded on the secondary whisky market for a very long time and now celebrated their comeback. In this month this title belongs to two Laphroaig twins bottled by Dun Eideann. For both the Laphroaig 15yo (1988) Cask 3603 and the Laphroaig 15yo (1988) Cask 3602 the first price observations come from November 2005. The prices paid back then were 71 and 76 Euros. Almost twelve years later both this single cask bottlings traded for 295 Euros.
 
As every month, do not forget to check-up on the value of your personal whisky collections.