Karuizawa closes the gap to Rosebank and pushes our Fabulous Fifty collection to new records. Meanwhile, Yamazaki overtakes Macallan and Ardbeg continues its consolidation phase. Here is the Whiskystats Price Update for September 2021. 

Almost eight thousand whiskies in our database experienced a price change in this latest round of auctions. With 54 trades, the Glenallachie Cask Strength Batch 6 gathered a place among the three most traded whiskies. Our Whiskystats Whisky Index lost slightly and now stands at precisely 300 index points. But while most of our Scotch region indices signalled a rather humble month, our Japan index blew everything else out of the water.

Japanese Charge

A massive value gain of 12,5% for the historically most traded Japanese whiskies pushed our Japan index close to 1000 points, which would equal a tenfold compared to eight years ago. The primary driver of this is, without any question, Karuizawa, whose index also gained more than 12%, but Yamazaki (+6,05%) and Hanyu (+5,36%) did not perform particularly bad either. Karuizawa is now within striking distance to Rosebank, the current leader of our distillery ranking. From December 2020 to September 2021, within only nine months, Karuizawa made 36%, thereby crushing the peak from the Japanese Whisky Boom back in June 2015.

A close look at our Karuizawa index unveils that 55 different whiskies drove the index this month. No less than 50 of them gained in value. So plenty of examples from which to choose. The most extreme is, without doubt, the Karuizawa 32yo Cask 4333, jumping from 9.000 Euros to 33.000 Euros within a month. The Karuizawa 31yo Cask 155 went above 10.000 Euros for the first time, as did the Karuizawa 32yo Cask 3565 displayed below. And the Karuizawa 31yo Cask 4676 not only jumped above 10.000 Euros but landed at more than 14.000 Euros.
For Yamazaki, it was 41 bottles that drove the index this month, 29 of them gaining in value. The Yamazaki Mizunara Cask 2013 now trades for more than 4.000 Euros, while the Yamazaki 19yo Single Cask 3t70070 cemented its price north of 15.000 Euros. It is worth noting that WhiskyAuctioneer.com recorded all of these record trades. So it looks like their special spotlight on these Karuizawa releases paid off, at least for the sellers.

High Profile Setbacks

But where there is light, there is shadow, and we are yet to see a round of auctions where all whiskies gained in value. The most notable setbacks of this month have to be Ardbeg, Dalmore and Yoichi, which lost 4,87%, 6,46% and 6,38%, respectively. For Dalmore, this looks like just another turn in the sideward movement that we have now observed since early 2019. For more than 30 months, this index bounces back and forth somewhere just above 200 points. This latest drop saw Dalmore losing three places in our ranking as it now stands at the 14th position.
For Ardbeg, the story is different. From November 2019 to May 2021, we recorded +39% for this secondary market favourite. Since that peak, though, we see prices slightly declining. For us, this looks like an expectable cooldown phase after the heated price rally. The Ardbeg Young Uigeadail (Committee) and the Ardbeg Kildalton displayed below are good examples of this. Over the last two years, both these whiskies moved to an entirely new price level, and over the last couple of months, they both experienced huge variability. It almost looks like the market is not yet sure where exactly these new price levels should be.
The Yoichi story is similar to that of Ardbeg. From January 2019 to August 2021, we recorded an index gain of 43%. It was only in June when our Yoichi index jumped from 238 to 271 points. Now it fell back to 256 points but again, for the moment, this more looks like a reasonable cooldown than the start of a severe downward movement. This case is perfectly illustrated by the Yoichi 20yo, which by the end of last year regularly sold for around 1.500 Euros. Over the previous months, prices climbed as high as 2.600 Euros and now fell back to roughly 1.800 Euros.

Fabulous Record

Our Fabulous Fifty collection experienced quite a static performance from mid-2018 to mid-2020. The fifty included bottles were roughly worth 120.000 Euros during that period, and our Fab50 index never really moved above 400 points. It looks like this changed now. With the latest round of auction results, our prestigious fifty single malts now have a market value of 156.000 Euros. Over the past twelve months, the collection index gained 25% to reach a new all-time peak of 484 points.
Notable value gainers are (among others) the Glenfarclas 46yo (1954), the Macallan 18yo (1979) Gran Reserva and the Brora 30yo 2004 Release. Unsurprisingly, this month’s index movement was also driven mainly by the included Karuizawa releases, like the Karuizawa 29yo Cask 3663 and the above mentioned Karuizawa 32yo Cask 3565.

So the secondary whisky market never fails to tell exciting stories. Did you know that you can start using Whiskystats to evaluate whisky for free? Become a member and gain insights 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.