The market stabilized after its very slight setback in May. While the first Feis Ile 2021 releases made their way to auctions, prices for Japanese whisky continue to climb. Here is the Whiskystats Price Update for June 2021.

With little more than 15,5 thousand trades, the June 2021 round of auctions brought new pricing information for 7,8 thousand different whiskies in our database. Our primary market indices are all in the greens again. After our Whiskystats Whisky Index (WWI) lost 1,9% in May, it has now gained 1,4% to close in at 286,5 points, just 1,5 points shy of the April 2021 peak. Our Fab50 collection even achieved a new record. The fifty included bottles are worth more than 150 thousand Euros for the first time.

Japanese Continuity

As discussed in our previous article, the winter months of the 20/21 season saw a heated price rally on the secondary whisky market. This “Winter 20/21 Sprint” mainly affected the traditional scotch whisky regions. And Japan? Japanese whisky continued to do what Japanese whisky is doing, and that is gaining value. From all the indices we calculate, whether, for regions or distilleries, our below displayed Japan index outperforms them all. Driven by the most traded Japanese whiskies each month, this index leaves no question about who is leading the collectable whisky segment at the moment.
After its rocket appearance on the market in 2014/15 and the consolidation phase in 2016/17, Nippon whisky is gaining value most stably and continuously. Over the last 15 quarters, there were only two in which our Japan index did not realize some significant gains. Since September 2017, it won 126%, which equals 5,6% per quarter on average. Unsurprisingly, Japan is the only region with three distilleries in the Top 10 of our distillery ranking, which are Karuizawa (currently ranked at the 2nd place), Yamazaki (3rd) and Hanyu (5th).

Feis Ile

Every year, it is in the summer months of June and July when the first releases from the Feis Ile festival, which takes place in May, are traded on auctions. By now, we count twelve different Feis Ile 2021 expressions. The most expensive one is the Bunnahabhain Trithead Sa Ceithir 35yo (1986), of which five bottles were traded on ScotchWhiskyAuctions.com with buyer prices averaging 1.105 Euros. Also on the list is the Bruichladdich Laddie Origins which achieved 218 Euros. Not too bad, considering the bottle was only available through a ballot process for 180 Euros.
Above, we calculated an index which summarizes the price development of all the Feis Ile releases we track in our database. So each month, the changes in the value of the historically most traded Feis Ile bottles define the index movement. The overall performance is rather humble, although, over the past 18 months, the index gained 25%. The most expensive Feis Ile release we know of is the Port Ellen 27yo (1981) from the 2008 festival. It was last traded in the May 2021 round of auctions and achieved a staggering 9.000 Euros on WhiskyAuctioneer.com.

Outstanding Trades

This month we want to point out some trades that perfectly demonstrate how a well-informed market participant could save or make some money, depending on whether they are on the buyer or seller side. Take the below displayed Glenmorangie 12yo (1993) Single Cask 1953. Apparently, there is an audience on WhiskyAuctioneer.com willing to pay prices above 2.000 Euros to 3.500 Euros. On the other auction platforms, however, 1.500 Euros were the maximum, with 700 Euros from WhiskyAuction.com in May 2021.
But this is not restricted to the different auction platforms. The attentive bidder may have spotted that the below Aultmore (1973) Single Cask 4971 from Samaroli was available at 2.800 Euros in the May round of auctions on WhiskyAuctioneer.com. And that after it achieved 4.200 Euros in April and 3.300 Euros in March, all on the same platform. Sure enough, it now came in at 4.900 Euros to conclude its rollercoaster price ride. Does anybody say volatility?

A similar story could be in the making with the Mortlach 36yo (1936) Connoisseurs Choice. After this Pinerolo import constantly fetched around 3.000 Euros in the past couple of months, it now sold for only 890 Euros. Again all of this is happening on the same auction platform.

So being informed can pay off. Did you know that you can start tracking the secondary market prices on Whiskystats for free?

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.