The last round of auctions of 2019 is history. Karuizawa and Hanyu swap places in our distillery ranking while the overall market continues to stumble sidewards. Here is our last monthly price update of the decade.
Again more than fifteen thousand bottles of whisky were traded in auctions last month. Macallan accounted for the most trades and five of the top ten most traded bottles. The Edition No.5 is this month only beaten by the Easter Elchies Black 2019 Edition, of which we observed 87 bottles changing their owners for an average price of 813 Euros. But the sheer mass of trades did not prevent the Macallan distillery index from losing yet again. The 100 most traded Macallan whiskies lost slightly by 0,42% like they did most of the year.
The above displayed Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) has been losing ground since July 2019. However, this decrease seems to be slowing down, and December 2019 saw the historically 500 most traded whiskies only losing 0,2%. Nevertheless, 2019 marks the year with the poorest performance of our major market index. But more on that in our upcoming Annual Report for 2019.
Distillery Ranking
Our monthly updated distillery ranking saw many leaders in 2019. After long years in which Macallan and Karuizawa were battling for the crown, Karuizawa lost this title to Rosebank early this year. But the silent Japanese distillery came back and led the table until the summer months. Then Hanyu sped forward, mainly driven by the exploding prices for the Playing Card Series. But in the year’s closing months, that rush ended as the most traded Hanyu bottlings lost more than 7% in December 2019.
So by the end of the year, the Top 3 of our distillery ranking are precisely the same as at the beginning of the year. Karuizawa leads the table once again, followed by Rosebank and Hanyu. Macallan is no real contender since the Macallan Price Rally ended in September 2018. The fifth distillery in our picture is one to look out for. Our Yamazaki index is constantly gaining, without any significant drops. In 2019, it gained a solid 11,7%.
Further down the list, we also saw Ardbeg and Yoichi swapping places. Another strong gainer of December 2019 seems to be Glengoyne. The included bottles gained almost 5% in value this month. But when looking at the overall index, it seems this could only be a slight hiccup in the general downward movement we have witnessed since January 2018. Over the last 24 months, the Glengoyne index lost more than 10%.
Remarkable Trades
Besides the above mentioned Macallans, we find some other interesting releases on the list of the most traded whiskies of the month. There are two newcomers, aside from the Yamazaki 12yo and Yamazaki 18yo, which traded heavily month after month. The Octomore Concept X4+10 was traded no less than 47 times. On average, this ten-year-old Islay single malt achieved 300 Euros. The Chichibu London Edition 2019 even reached an average price of 561 Euros in 37 trades. Single lots even went as high as 650 Euros.
Another exciting trade of December 2019 is the Tullibardine 40yo (1968) Cask 130. This Highland single malt is seen at auctions, usually only once every other year. We had not observed it since back in May 2015 when it sold for 500 Euros. More than four and a half years later, 2.300 Euros were paid. Fun fact here. This amount equals an annual return of around 40,3%, which matches precisely the alcohol volume.
Finally, we want to point out two Scotch Malt Whisky Society releases. The Laphroaig 29.53 sold for 300 Euros. This special “With Friends” edition was available for 60 Euros five years ago. More impressive is the Longmorn 7.29. This 36 years-old 2004 bottling achieved a whopping 1.700 Euros this month.
How did your personal whisky collection perform this month? Find out and start tracking the market 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.