The heat goes on as the latest round of auctions saw strong value gains for many collectable whiskies. Our Talisker index performs strongly while some old Scotch Malt Whisky Society releases returned to auctions. Here is the Whiskystats Price Update for January 2022.

It was only in July 2021 when our Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) went above 300 points for the very first time. After three months of consolidation, it picked up momentum again in November and December last year. In the January round of auctions, the 500 historically most traded whiskies gained 5,8% in value again, bringing our WWI to 350 index points equalling a 17% increase over the past six months. A look at our below displayed Scotch region indices gives a solid hint to where these gains are coming from.
It is the second consecutive month where all our region indices (including Japan not displayed above) are in the greens. So it is an overall upwards move, but there are some regions for which this move is particularly steep. The 100 historically most traded Speyside releases went up by 7% last month, bringing the corresponding index to 400 points. Once again, the main driver is Macallan, with a plus of 6,77%. Then there is Campbeltown with a staggering +12% within one round of auctions, and of course, Springbank is the primary force behind that. The 100 most traded Highland single malts gained 8,6%, but it looks like it is only a matter of time until Campbeltown claims third place among these Scotch whisky regions.

Talisker’s Roaring Twenties

When looking at the Top 20 of our distillery ranking, we see that the best performance of this month didn’t come from Macallan or Springbank but from Talisker. In the last decade, so up until January 2020, our Talisker index moved from 100 to 106 points signalling that secondary market prices did not move much at all. It looks like things have changed quite a bit with the new decade. Over the past two years, our Talisker index gained more than 70%. It thereby showed the same performance as our Whiskystats Whisky Index, as is displayed in the direct comparison below. We can see that Talisker even outperformed the WWI for one and a half years and only started to slow down in the second half of 2021.
Naturally, the question arises which Taliskers are responsible for these index movements. One example is the below displayed Talisker 25yo 2004 Release. This single malt saw a comparably slow but constant increase in value up until December 2020. Then an auction lot at Whisky.Auction went above 1.000 Euros, and the overall pace of price increases sped up. Over the past months, results at all tracked auction houses came in at around 750 Euros and above. With the January round of auctions, they now approached 1.000 Euros, and it looks like this indeed could be the new price level, at least for the time being.

But obviously, more Taliskers are backing the distillery index movement. The Talisker 25yo 2005 Release mirrors the above 2004 Release. Most of the latest auction lots reached a buyer price of around 700 Euros and some even came in at 900 Euros. Another example is the Talisker 25yo 2001 Release which fetched almost 1.200 Euros. But there are also more recent releases which are gaining value these days. The Talisker 30yo 2017 Release is now selling for 800 Euros and above after being available below 500 Euros in May.

SMWS Returnees

One of the enormous benefits of the secondary whisky market is the availability of long gone whiskies. Every month we observe bottles appearing at auctions that haven’t been seen for years or even decades. There were many Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) releases this month. One example is the Springbank SMWS 27.48 below. In January 2015, the last bottle sold at auction for 129 Euros. This month, 922 Euros were paid, equalling a 615% increase in value over the past seven years.

The Craigellachie SMWS 44.6 went from 137 Euros in September 2013 to 900 Euros now. The Glen Elgin SMWS 85.9 brought home a 1.122% gain as it now sold for 733 Euros after the 60 Euros from May 2012. But the biggest returnee is the Glenfarclas SMWS 1.123. We only had two price observations at around 180 Euros dating back to January and May 2011. As we all know, the whisky market has changed slightly over the past eleven years, so it is no surprise that this 38yo Glenfarclas now realized no less than 2.260 Euros.

Remarkable Trades

We always want to round things off by highlighting some other remarkable trades. Like last month, the discrepancy between UK and EU auction prices caught our attention again. This time, we want to highlight the Glendronach Cask Strength Batch 4. While prices at EU auctions remained at around 100 Euros over the past couple of months, in the UK, it was first 200 Euros, then 300 Euros and now 400 Euros were paid. Similar, but not quite that severe, is going on for the Glendronach Cask Strength Batch 1.

In our December 2021 Price Update pointed out this pattern for the Dalwhinnie Game of Thrones (House Stark) release. It is worth noting that the discrepancy there shrunk this month. Prices at the EU auctions increased slightly while those in the UK dropped significantly.

Do not forget to check the latest price changes of your collections or start tracking your collection as a Whiskystats member.

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.