According to GM Insights the global whiskey market is worth close to $70 billion (€66 billion) and forecast to hit $125 billion by 2032. The sector in Ireland has been growing in double-digit figures over the past decade. There’s cash in them thar casks ... but is whiskey really the liquid gold some would have you believe, or is it simply an expensive hobby that, if practised with care, might pay for itself?
As with any investment market that is heating up, there are disreputable operators circling like vultures, ready to take advantage of inexperienced investors and a largely unregulated investment category. Caution is advised and the value of your investments may go up, as well as get washed down.
For starters, beware anyone who tries to entice you with impressive potential returns based on figures from the Knight Frank Rare Whisky Index – it specifically tracks 100 iconic collectors’ bottles which are highly sought after and regularly traded. While the value of a 1966 Macallan may have skyrocketed since the index started, that bears no relation to the profusion of firewaters of varying quality outside that very rarefied bubble.
However, whiskey investing is a very nice excuse to treat yourself to an expensive bottle this Christmas. The key thing to remember is, as The Notorious B.I.G. once pointed out in song, never get high on your own supply. If you think you can restrain yourself from popping it open during the festive season, you could be on your way to making some juicy returns in the future.
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Ally Alpine has been working in the drinks business for more than 40 years, and in that time has seen huge changes in Ireland, with growing consumer interest and a plethora of new distilleries popping up. He opened the Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dublin’s Dawson Street in 2003. His whiskey empire now extends to Killarney, with the Irish Whiskey Experience and Celtic Whiskey Bar & Larder, as well as the digital world with celticwhiskeyauction.com among his online alcohol sales portfolio. It’s fair to say, there’s very little this man doesn’t know about buying and selling whiskey.
Bottles offer a straightforward entry point, with limited editions and unique releases driving value. Alpine sees a lot of “whiskey speculators” who buy limited-edition bottles and sell them at auction. “Flippers buy something the day it is released and try and sell it the next day when it’s sold out … They buy nearly all the limited editions,” he says.
Alpine suggests that if you want to start buying from a new distillery, get in with their first launches, and stick with them, so that you can build up a collection of bottles and sets that would appeal to a completist collector at auction.
Celtic Whiskey began dealing in casks several years ago and Alpine says, “it’s getting bigger for us now than bottles”. With prices for a cask ranging from €1,200 to €6,000, depending on the size of a barrel, it’s still a reasonably accessible entry point.
The investment allure lies in the fact that whiskey matures in flavour, and therefore in value, throughout its time in the cask.
“If you have a few bob, it’s an interesting investment,” says Alpine. “We send all the customers a sample every year, so they can see how it changes.”
Alpine works with Staffords Bonded in Wexford, and recently held an open day there so that cask investors could visit their casks and test the whiskey. He emphasises the importance of investors visiting casks in person to ensure they exist and are genuine, in the wake of scam schemes that dealt in casks that didn’t exist.
“Some companies promise great wealth to be had. We don’t promise that; we sell them at the most competitive price, so it doesn’t really need to go up much in value for a customer to be into profit,” he says.
Celtic Whiskey’s website is extremely transparent and outlines in great detail exactly what costs are involved in terms of initial cask outlay, storage and insurance, bottling and dry goods (corks, capsules, labels, boxes), duty and VAT, and even how much loss of liquid you can expect due to evaporation over the lifetime in the cask – known as the angels’ share.
Alpine says some investors might “buy 20 casks with a view to selling it down the line”, with the benefit of no capital gains tax – “It’s treated like art or wine, as a spoilable asset.” However, the way he describes it, a cask might be better viewed as a legacy, rather than an investment: “My mum bought a cask for her grandkids, for them to bottle ‘when she goes’, she says.”
Elliot Hughes is managing director of Dingle Distillery. When his late father Oliver, one of the founders, first introduced the idea it was novel in Ireland, and the initial Founding Fathers release of 500 casks sold out. It was a genius way for the fledgling distillery to rustle up some cash flow as they waited for their first batch of whiskey to age. A minimum of three years cask ageing is required by law for a spirit to qualify as whiskey, unlike Bourbon, which isn’t subject to any such minimum.
“Whiskey distillation is so capital intensive; to be able to get people to pay upfront for a cask is massively beneficial for the distillery,” says Hughes.
He sees their cask investment programme as building a community of brand ambassadors – people who have links to Dingle or love to visit. “We don’t talk about guaranteed returns, and we don’t give projections for return investment,” he says. “Our investors are a broader mix than most – we do have individuals that are looking for investment, whether they are into Irish whiskey or just looking to spread their asset base, but we also have groups of friends who like to meet up and come down to Dingle once a year and use this as an excuse to do that. Then we have people from the area, and people who live in the United States but have a connection to the area.”
Hughes’s advice for potential investors is to buy a cask directly from a distillery, to ensure that what you’re getting is the real deal. It supports the distillery without losing margin to a middleman.
“We want people who invest in our cask programme to want to be involved in whiskey, to come down and be passionate about the distillery and Dingle itself. They’re excited to be part of this community.”
While some people may struggle to organise a gathering in a brewery, as the saying goes, there’s no such issue here, as the distillery parties are the stuff of legend, when the cask investor community gathers to sample the wares.
Another, less fun, but potentially more tax-savvy option is to invest in a distillery via the Employment Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS). Nick Charalambous, managing director of Alpha Wealth, lives in Co Cork and worked with local distillery Blacks of Kinsale to raise funds through the EIIS, which supports new companies by offering tax relief to investors.
“The reason it lends itself well to whiskey companies is that it generally takes at least four years for them to distil their whiskey. By virtue of raising money through this mechanism, it allows them to get relatively cheap finance,” says Charalambous. “After four years, generally speaking, the whiskey company should be in a position to redeem the investment,” whether that is through organic cash flow starting to come in once they start to shift stock or being able to procure finance at reasonable rates from banks at that stage.
The scheme changed last year, and the tax relief is now tiered: 50 per cent for investments in new companies, 35 per cent for trading companies without previous finance and 20 per cent for those with past EIIS finance.
“It’s almost enticing people to invest in riskier companies; I’m not convinced that’s what the Government had envisaged, but that’s essentially how it’s been positioned to investors,” says Charalambous. “I wouldn’t do it at the 20 per cent tax relief personally; I just don’t think that’s enough … the key thing I would say to your readers is ‘buyer beware’. You have to investigate the companies.”
The scheme is unregulated and companies essentially self-certify for inclusion, so Charalambous advises extreme caution.
We don’t have room to more than scratch the surface here, but if you see me at the bar some day, buy me a dram of something off the top shelf and I’ll tell you more. After extensive research, this writer has decided the best way to approach whiskey investment is one glass at a time. If you do go all-in, eventually you may end up with a valuable collection, but worst-case scenario, you’ll have lots of whiskey. Sláinte!