Springbank holds on
This month Springbank has just held onto the top position, but the story I think is about another bank, Rosebank. Rosebank has moved up the field significantly and with Brora also moving up it seems that distilleries that have been long gone, but are now being brought back to life are doing well. Whether this is to do with the publicity surrounding these distilleries or not we will never know, but with Rosebank resuming construction earlier this year and Brora being opened in the summer, there is a lot of excitement over these distilleries and their historical bottlings will be of greater importance as they get closer to bottling their new whisky.
As always, it seems the difference at the top of the field is very little in percentage terms and last month was tighter than ever proving that buying bottles from within the top echelons of whisky will probably do you well in the long run.
With the prices of bottles from closed distilleries very high at retail, it really is best to find bottles at auction. Below the whisky ranking is a list of auction houses in the UK, US and Hong Kong which have been around for a while and are well respected.
Springbank .5%
Brora 1%
Macallan 1%
Bowmore 1.0%
Karuizawa .5
Rosebank Official Bottlings 2%
Clynelish 2%
The Dalmore 2%
Ardbeg 2%
Glen Grant
Best Whisky Auction Houses in the UK
Scotchwhiskyauctions.com
Based in Scotland, this auction house is one of the longer established businesses and has reasonable fees.
Whiskyauctioneers.com
This auction house is relatively new to the scene but has rapidly become the biggest auction house of all. With thousands of bottles in each auction, there is always something to pick up at a good price.
Whisky.auction
This house is owned by the hugely respected Sukhinder Singh and run by Isabel Graham-Yooll they have a huge amount of experience in weeding out fake whisky and are one of the safest houses to buy from. Their organisational skills are second to none and buying or selling is incredibly smooth and easy.
Best Whisky Auction Houses in the US
Ackerwines.com
The USA’s oldest wine and spirits merchant has been doing wine auctions for many years and retailing wines and spirits since 1820, however, in May 2019 they held their first Spirits auction in Hong Kong and are going from strength to strength. With a hugely knowledgeable team across Hong Kong, the UK and USA they are definitely worth consideration, and if you are USA-based then an obvious house to look at.
Best Whisky Auction Houses in Hong Kong
Bonhams
A subsidiary of the famous London auction house, Bonhams has been breaking records for selling whisky rather a lot recently. Well-known and well respected, I would say Bonhams is a great place to sell any collection.
Spinks
A smaller lesser-known auction house that gets less publicity than Bonhams and I would say a good place to find whisky.
All the above auction houses are good places to buy and sell whisky, they have respected reputations and slick operations. But do some research. Some are better at selling and others better at consigning unusual bottles. All are happy to talk to you and help you in our quest for fabulous whisky though.
To catch up on the past couple of months of whisky investment advice and to see how it all started click on the following links: October, September, August, the beginning.