Cask investment is set to remain a popular alternative investment in 2025. Whisky casks have a historic record of increasing in value over time and can be a positive way to build generational wealth over the long term. The following seven key things to know about whisky cask investment in 2025 are perfect for new investors and seasoned cask buyers. Plus, if you’re new to whisky cask investment make sure you download our free cask buying guide, updated for 2025.
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WOWGR Is Being Repealed
The rumours had been building through 2024, but it has finally been confirmed that WOWGR will be repealed in 2025. This is important for existing cask owners as it means that there will no longer be a five cask limit for private individuals who wish to build a portfolio of casks held in their name at the warehouse.
The downside to the repeal is that it also removes the (slim) barrier for entry for new cask investment companies that are not offering a robust product to their customers. As such the need to do due diligence remains high.
At Mark Littler Ltd we only sell casks with delivery orders, but we understand that some companies had suggested you needed a WOWGR to own casks in this way. The repeal of WOWGR means this barrier/excuse is removed. So if you’ve been refused a delivery order in the past, consider recontacting your dealer to find out if they will now give you security of a delivery order.
A delivery order acknowledged by the warehouse gives private individuals the most control over their assets.
A Delivery Order Still Offers The Best Protection
A delivery order acknowledged by the warehouse is the industry standard way of transferring the ownership of casks at the warehouse level. The SWA explains how there is a chance that a warehouse will accept something else, but the important thing is the confirmation from the warehouse directly rather than via a certificate/deed etc.
If you do not have direct contact with the warehouse then your asset is at risk. In 2024 multiple cask investment companies became uncontactable, Cask Whisky Ltd was shut down by the City of London Police. This left the customers of those companies with no direct contact with their casks. Those clients now have an uphill battle to claim ownership of those casks.
WOWGR was used by some cask investment companies as a reason as to why they would not issue delivery orders, the repeal in 2025 will remove that barrier.
It’s More Important Than Ever To Invest Long Term
Cask investment is a long term venture. With the secondary whisky market feeling the impacts of the global economic downturn of the last two years this message is more important than ever.
Casks increase in value slowly for the first 12 years of their lifetime. That means you can “shortcut” the investment by purchasing a cost effective young cask (around 4 to 12 years old), to hold for around 10 years and sell at 18 years old.
If you are looking for a new make whisky then we suggest a 15 to 20 year commitment. We do not suggest selling a cask before it is 12 years old at the very minimum.
Mature casks can be an alternative option if you have more capital and understand the higher risks of buying older casks. We still suggest a minimum eight to ten year investment window for older casks. You can read more about the right time to sell a cask here.
Secondary Names Add Risk
Age is the main and most reliable driver of value for whisky casks. However for casks of the same age the big differentiation is the distillery and the market position of that distillery as a single malt whisky brand. If you are buying a cask without naming rights then you remove the opportunity to benefit from any long term changes in a distillery’s market position.
There is also an additional risk generated by the fact that secondary names are not often trademarked. That means that anyone can register the trademark and remove your ability to benefit from even the secondary name. Or indeed, as was the case with Annandale (which used to be the secondary name for Bunnahabhain), one of the tens of new distilleries opening each year could decide they like the name and trademark it for themselves. What that means is you will be left with a cask of unnamed whisky, either for blending or Islay/Speyside/Highland single malt—which are saleable but significantly less commercial than whisky from a named distillery.
Thus, the risk with secondary names is limiting the future profitability of your cask. Which is why at Mark Littler Ltd we only sell casks with naming rights.
The Best Protection Is Through Understanding
As a consumer one of the best ways you can protect yourself is by learning about the industry. The SWA suggest the same as a starting point: “we believe that potential investors should understand something of the structure and operating methods of the industry to assess the risk vs reward of cask investment proposals.”
The SWA doesn’t regulate the cask investment, but they do offer some guidance that they updated in 2024. If you’re after some impartial advice then their PDF offers a good starting point.
Mark Littler and Felipe Schrieberg (whisky writer, co-director of independent bottler/record label Rhythm and Booze Records and a Keeper of the Quaich) worked together to create the independent website ProtectYourCask.com. While we provide a lot of information here on MarkLittler.com on Protect Your Cask Mark and Felipe have paired everything down to the core messages for simplicity.
Checking A Cask’s Value
It can be difficult to independently verify the price you’re being asked to pay for a cask of whisky. There isn’t any large scale open source data available and the limited number of open market sales through auction sites are often unreliable because of the limitations around warehousing. Then you’ve got the issues of comparing casks of different ages and sizes.
You can look at resources like our guide to distilleries and parent companies that offer direct cask sales as a starting point. New make casks start around £2,000 for barrels and £5,000 for larger casks. Once you start looking at older casks it gets a little tricker to check. We suggest £4,000 to £8,000 is a good starting point for cask investment in a cask aged 4 to 12 years.
Within the industry casks are valued on a per litre of alcohol basis, so if you want to compare similar casks of different sizes and alcoholic strengths you can do so by dividing the cost by the litres of alcohol (LOA), which might also be given as OLA or RLA (original litres of alcohol and regauged litres of alcohol respectively). If you don’t have it you can divide the bulk litres (or total volume of whisky in the cask) by 100 and then multiply it by the ABV (the alcoholic strength).
So a £2,100 cask with 190 bulk litres at 63% has 119.7 litres of alcohol, which makes the cask worth £17.54 per litre of alcohol.
Another way to check a cask’s value is to calculate an accurate per bottle price and compare it to secondary market prices for bottles of whisky similar to the cask you’re looking at. The taxes and duty due on casks when you bottle them mean this isn’t straightforward, but we created the Cask Calculator to help. Full guidance on using the calculator can be found on that page too.
Whisky Cask Investment Is Unregulated
The last thing to remember when looking at cask investment in 2025 is that it remains unregulated. WOWGR never regulated the sale of casks to members of the public but it did mean that companies had a few hoops to jump through before they could sell casks. Now anyone who can get an account at a warehouse can sub-sell those casks the very same day.
The Advertising Standards Agency’s January 2024 enforcement notice has also had a positive impact on the amount of misleading information available online. But there are limits.
Always remember that a cask investment is like any other investment; returns are not guaranteed. But most of all, always adhere to this golden rule: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
