The satisfaction of collecting whiskies holds considerably more pleasure than all of today’s ‘manufactured’ collectables —plates, thimbles or die-cast models—as here we have a legitimate and scholarly subject with no less than five hundred years of provenance.
But wait!
If you want to buy whisky as an investment—walk away now, buy lottery tickets. Every collector has gems worth several times their cost but it is possible the whole collection will not have appreciated at all. Assemble your collection for your pleasure and not for your future.
So what do you want to collect? It’s a question worth considering early on, otherwise you will create a diverse, confused collection which has near bankrupted you in its creation.
The sooner you can focus, the more pleasurable your collection will be. Specialise, create a set of rules and try to stick to it. Generally the thoughts are: malt or blend? (usually malt); only official bottlings or any? (usually OB first choice, then independent if necessary); what top price? (are you prepared to be victim to a lavishly presented rarity, fifty times more expensive than the norm?)
Simple specialisations may be a specific region, fancy shaped bottles or ranges such as the Rare Malts series.
One popular choice is to seek a representative of every possible distillery, first choice being the official bottling but it will be necessary to default to independent bottlings in some cases. Some may then go on to collect cask strength bottlings only, trading in their first specialisation to finance the next project.
Others home in on one region or even one distillery; Ardbeg, Bowmore & Springbank are favoured for a steady trickle of interesting releases. Macallan have recently released too many, excessively expensive bottlings. Greed has destroyed their market for new bottlings (old Macallan bottles are doing well).
Astute buying of ‘ordinary’ bottlings can do well; as they get repackaged or discontinued they become desirable with time. For premium priced ‘collectables’ the ratio of number of bottles released to price is an important factor. Consider the total number produced. A release of up to 600 uniquely presented bottles is scarce; 2,000 bottles and a sensible price is worthwhile. Bowmore’s 40yo release of 300 bottles at £4,000 is wrong (there aren’t that many mugs in the world), however their ‘Black Bowmore’ series of three would have set you back £ 300 and now realises £ 4,000!
Whatever your choice, you are guaranteed much pleasure in something that will add decoration and interest to your home, and done sensibly you shouldn’t lose money to boot!
|
