New year, the same story. Prices for rare and collectable whisky increase across the board. This time, Islay and Speyside led the way, while prices for Japanese whiskies did not move much. Some of our distillery indices shot up too. Here is the Whiskystats Price Update for January 2021.
With just shy of 12 thousand new price observations, January 2021 was a relatively quiet auction month for quantity. Around 6,5 thousand of our database’s 76 thousand different whiskies experienced a price update. The average price paid per bottle was 500 Euros, the third-highest value we have ever observed. But that average could be skewed by the respective bottles that were actually traded, so we better look at our Whiskystats Indices.
The Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) yet again increased by more than 5% within a single round of auctions. This means that the historically 500 most traded whiskies gained around 5% in value last month. And this comes after a 6,5% gain from the WWI in December 2020, meaning we are now standing at no less than 263 index points.
Region Indices
Our region indices confirm that this was a broader market movement. The two major whisky regions that did not significantly gain were Campbeltown (+0,47%) and Japan (+0,39%). So in that sense, Japan was actually the “worst” performing whisky region in January 2021. Other than that, the index jumps were so severe that we went into an extra round of validating the underlying data and methodology, but everything looks good there.
So the 100 most traded Islay whiskies gained 7,39% in value, those from the Lowlands 6,99% and those from the Highlands 6,41%. Compared to those previous numbers, the 5,1% from the Islands and 4,88% from Speyside are almost humble. Looking at the performance over the last couple of months, Islay and the Speyside gained a parallel momentum. From the low in December 2019, our Islay index climbed almost 50%.
Remarkable Trades
We always try to back these index movements with some of the actual price observations that drove them. When you look at our distillery ranking, you will find some indices that indeed shot up last month. For example, our Bruichladdich index gained a whopping 14,4%. One of the whiskies responsible for this is the Bruichladdich 3D3 Norrie Campbell Tribute. In November, we saw a price observation for the 3D3 as low as 80 Euros. And now we observed 216 Euros, which equals +100% compared to the 108 Euros from December.
Even more impressive is the Port Charlotte Cask Exploration (Bruthaich Dubh). The price for this 10-year-old jumped from 163 Euros in December to now 394 Euros. Same story for the Port Charlotte Cask Exploration (Bogha-Drochaide), which now sold for 222 Euros. And yes, we do include the subbrands “Octomore” and “Port Charlotte” in our Bruichladdich distillery index. The same is true for other subbrands like “Longrow” and “Hazelburn” (Springbank).
Moving on, our Macduff index gained 22,2% this month. Here we see an example where we tend to have relatively few price observations to include in our index, and hence we see quite choppy movements. Nevertheless, there is a good reason for this spike. The Macduff The Cars release from Moon-Import fetched 382 Euros after achieving only 194 Euros in December. And, among others, the Macduff “The Socialite” Tiger’s Choice gained 30% within a month too.
Another example of a remarkable value gain is the Benromach 45yo. Traded in December last year for 790 Euros, this Speyside Single Malt now came in at no less than 1.300 Euros. And then there is the Balblair 27yo (1990) 2nd Release which cost 207 Euros in December and now 376 Euros. Or the Balblair (2002) Single Malts of Scotland for which it was 109 Euros in December and 197 Euros now. As the last example, we chose the Daftmill Winter Batch Release 2020, which once again experienced quite a price jump within a single month. The 216 Euros from December and the 394 Euros from January equal an 82% price increase.
And last but not least, we also have to mention the number one value gainer of January 2021, and that crown goes to a Blend from renowned Compass Box Whisky. The Compass Box Juveniles (20th Anniversary) was last seen on auction in October 2013 when somebody acquired a bottle for as little as 84 Euros. And now, more than seven years later, the price label for this Juveniles release climbed to an incredible 4000 Euros. So that is a 4660% increase in price.
What a round of auctions. We saw many significant price jumps compared to the observations from December. These jumps are why some of our indices show steep spikes, and quite rightly so. What about the indices of your personal collections? Did you know that as a Whiskystats member, you can now start tracking the value of your very own whisky collection?
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.