August saw prices for many of the most collectable whiskies under pressure. Macallan, Springbank and Karuizawa all lost ground, but our Islay brand indices are pointing upwards. Here is the Whiskystats Price Update for August 2022.
This month’s Price Update is special in many ways. It is the first Price Update published on our new website and the first based on the new database. From this point forward, our Monthly Price Updates will summarize the calendar months instead of the manually defined “round of auctions”. Therefore, this article series will be published towards the end of each month, once the last auction closes.
We are here also referencing our refined market indices for the first time. The most significant difference with our new indices is that they also summarize the calendar months. However, compared to our old indices, they still describe the same overall market movements. You can find an overview of the latest index movements in our newly created Index Monitor.
Special are also some of the index movements of August 2022. Our Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) lost -1,95%, indicating that the historically 500 most traded whiskies lost value. But what stands out most is the performance of the most collectable whisky brands.
Top Dows
Our market indices for seven of the most collectable whisky brands are all in the reds, some quite significantly. The 55 Yamazaki releases that our Yamazaki index covered this month lost -2,90% in value, and the 18 Hanyu expressions traded in August experienced a setback of -4,81%. Even our Karuizawa index saw a minus of -3,56%. A rare sight, as our chart of the index movements over the past 12 months shows below.
Prices for collectable Springbanks have continued their downward movement since the “Springbank Price Explosion” peaked in March 2022. The respective 100 Springbanks in our August index lost another -3,86%. We now see a minus of -20% compared to the March peak.
But the most significant setback we observed is Macallan. A considerable -8,07% mark this Speyside distillery’s most substantial downturn since December 2018. Our Macallan index also peaked in March at 584 index points. But in the five months that followed, only July saw the historically most traded Macallans not losing any value. These are whiskies like the below displayed Macallan Travel Series 1950s. The two price observations from August averaged 475 Euros after some lots reached 1.000 Euros in April and January.
And there are even more prominent examples of this reversal price pattern. Prices for the Macallan Folio 2 fell as “low” as 7.500 Euros, which is about the price level from the end of last year. Only a couple of months ago, buyer prices reached 10.000 Euros and above on several occasions. The Macallan Folio 1 makes no exception. The latest prices came in at around 14.000 Euros after peaking at 21.000 Euros in March this year.
Islay Ups
In contrast to those mentioned above, we see almost all our Islay brand indices in the greens this month. Leading the way is Bowmore, with an index gain of +4,79%. Among others, it is the Bowmore 1972 which is responsible for this. It now fetched 3.650 Euros after selling for around 3.000 Euros last year. The Bowmore 1988 Feis Ile 2013 continues to gain value, as it is now repeatedly selling for 1.100 Euros or more.
As we can see in the index movements displayed above, the second big Islay value gainer is Port Ellen. Over the past 12 months, our Port Ellen index climbed by 12,5% to now stand at 366 points. Port Ellen even overtook Springbank again in our Brand index ranking. These gains come from strong recent performers like the below displayed Port Ellen 1978 Rare Malts Selection. The market value (90-day average of price observations) of this 22-years-old Islay single malt is now pointing at 2.500 Euros. Some single lots almost reached 3.000 Euros recently.
From the Islay brand indices above, we also observe that prices for Lagavulin stopped their downward momentum, at least for the time being. The 97 included whiskies gained 1,69% in August. These are releases like the Lagavulin 1991 200th Anniversary Single Cask, which jumped back to 4.400 Euros after dropping below 4.000 Euros in July. And this Lagavulin 1992 Casks of Distinction release reached 3.500 Euros after selling for between 2.000 and 2.500 Euros in the last five years.
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.