Mark Littler covers 14 of the most frequently asked questions around cask investment. Watch the video below or read on to find the answers to:
- What is cask investment and how does it work?
- Who is cask investment suitable for?
- How much does a cask of whisky cost?
- What is the best age to buy a cask?
- Are cask investment returns guaranteed?
- Is the profit from selling a cask tax-free in the UK?
- What are the hidden costs of holding a cask?
- How do I get an accurate valuation for my cask?
- What documentation proves you own the cask?
- What are the key scams and red flags to watch out for?
- Should I invest in ex-sherry or ex-bourbon casks?
- Which distilleries offer the best investment potential?
- What is the angels’ share, and how does it affect value?
- How do I sell my cask when I want to exit the investment?
For more information on buying or selling casks of whisky please explore our dedicated cask investment guides and feel free to get in touch using the forms below.
What is Cask Investment and How Does It Work?
The premise of whisky cask investment is built upon the core nature of the scotch whisky industry itself; that whisky improves with age and that older whisky can therefore sell for more than younger whisky.
No matter what core range of whisky you look at, whether that’s Macallan, Glen Allachie, Springbank, Glenfarclas, there’s a correlation between the price and the age. So the older the whisky, the more expensive it is. The premise of cask investment is that you buy a cask at the cheapest point in its lifetime and then you sell it when it’s an older cask of whisky and therefore worth more.
The important thing to realise is that the investment you are making is time; it is time in the cask which increases a whisky’s quality and value, and you cannot shortcut the process.
As Featured In:
Who is Cask Investment Suitable For?
Buying a cask is only suitable for people who could hold it for 10 to 20 years, as a minimum.
At Mark Littler Ltd we help people exit their investments and universally the best profits are for people who have owned a cask for the longest period of time. Ten is the absolute minimum investment period, but ideally you should aim to get the cask to +18 years old.
Cask investment is not suitable for short term investments so if you cannot commit to a ten year minimum then cask investment is not to you.
Send me my free cask buying guide
"*" indicates required fields
How Much Does a Cask of Whisky Cost?
How much a cask of whisky costs is dependent on the age and size of the cask as well as the distillery and where you buy it.
New make whisky you can expect to start around £2,000 to £5,000. For slightly older casks, what we term “young casks” around 5 to 10 years old, start around £4,000 to £6,000.
If you buy directly from a distillery then you can often pay more for a cask. New make can be anywhere between £5,000 and £15,000 depending on the distillery and cask size.
Buying on the secondary market from a broker or buying directly from distilleries have pros and cons that you should consider based on your personal situation.
How much you should spend on a cask is down to your individual situation. The investment rule of “don’t invest more than you can afford to lose” is just as important for cask purchase as it is for stocks and shares.
What is the Best Age to Buy a Cask?
The best age to buy a cask of whisky is going to depend on your potential time frames and the amount of money you have to spend.
New make is the best age to buy it if you want to pay the lowest initial price, however it has the longest minimum hold period and therefore longer ongoing costs.
If you can afford to spend +18 years waiting for that cask to mature—maybe you’ve just had a child or a grandchild—then new make is ideal.
If you want to wait a shorter amount of time (still a ten year minimum), then buying a 5 to 8 year old cask has a higher initial price but lower ongoing costs and shorter hold period. You still need to aim to get the cask to +18 years old.
Are Cask Investment Returns Guaranteed?
Returns for cask investment are not guaranteed.
Whisky casks are not regulated by the FCA or any sort of financial authority except in the USA—casks are classed as a security in the USA. But even where they are regulated, are cask investment returns guaranteed? Categorically not.
Over the long term of the history of scotch whisky, there’s always been a correlation between a young whisky costing less than an older whisky but that does not mean that there are no risks.
Returns are not guaranteed because of risks around evaporation (the “angels’ share”—see below) and market fluctuations, like the one caused by the current inflation spiral we’re experiencing. However the underlying premise of older whisky being worth more than younger means that over the long term (ten years plus), the investment model is sound. This does not mean there are no risks and you should not invest more than you can afford to lose.
Is the Profit from Selling a Cask Tax-Free in the UK?
Mark Littler Ltd is a broker, not a financial adviser, but we have helped people exit their cask investments for nearly 10 years now. The most expensive cask that we’ve ever helped someone sell was over £1.2 million , so when they put that money in the bank, they’ve sought their own financial advice. And what they’ve reported back is that in the UK casks of whisky are free of capital gains tax because they are a wasting asset.
Casks are a wasting asset because the predictable lifespan is less than 50 years. And if you look on somewhere like Whiskybase, of all the 260,000 bottles that are listed on there, less than a fraction of 1% of those bottles have ever made it 50 years and above. However, as soon as you go into the bottle, it’s a completely different picture.
Another caveat here is that this is the case in 2025 and there is no guarantee that this will still be the case in 10 to 20 years time.
When you come to sell a cask we suggest taking financial advice based on your situation to ensure you are paying the right tax.
Whisky Cask Valuations
Please use the form below to submit details about your cask and receive a free, no-obligation valuation.
Please note we can only value casks that are over the age of 12 years old. This article has all of the reasons why.
"*" indicates required fields
What are the Hidden Costs of Holding a Cask?
There should not be any hidden costs when buying a cask of whisky.
Additional costs that you might not immediately consider are things like insurance, rent, regauges and samples.
If you’ve got an expensive old cask of whisky, it might be worth taking out insurance but for younger and new make casks it is disproportionately expensive. A cask insurance policy will cost you around £350 for around £100,000 worth of cover. If your new make cask only costs £2,000 you may be better off putting your £350 into a savings account for 10 years and buying a new cask if something goes wrong.
Storage costs depend on the warehouse you use and can be anywhere from £35 to £200 a year. This will depend on the service levels of the warehouse you use and the size of your cask
We also suggest reguaging every 3 to 5 years. A regauge is where you measure how much whisky is inside the cask and you can take a sample at the same time. If you’re in a warehouse, you’ve got to get that cask off the rack down on the floor, measure it, draw the whisky out if you’re having a sample, record it all, get all the duty sorted, do all the administration, and post it out to you, and then put the cask back up on the rack. A regauge alone will start around £70 and a sample the same plus shipping it to you.
How Do I Get an Accurate Valuation for My Cask?
There isn’t a way of getting an accurate valuation for a whisky cask without putting it on the market and seeing what someone will pay for it.
The best place to start is to ask why are you getting a valuation? If you’re getting a valuation just to see how it’s going then actually it’s pretty meaningless anyway as the market goes up and down; even if you’re up/down now, you might not be the same proportion up/down in 5 years time when you actually planned to sell!
If you’ve had the cask less than three years and it’s under 12 years old then it’s likely worth around what you paid for it (barring huge market shifts). If you are 15 to 20 years into your cask investment then the market changes over that time mean you should be up. The change in value between 3 and 15 to 20 years is not linear so you’re not going to see uniform year on year increases.
Getting an accurate valuation is very difficult for any cask of whisky but for casks over 12 years old, if you want a valuation with a view to sell we can help.
What Documentation Proves You Own the Cask?
The Scotch Whisky Association suggests that to prove ownership you should have:
- A contract,
- A paid invoice/receipt and,
- Warehouse acknowledgment (a delivery order).
The invoice and contract will work in a court of law to prove that you purchased that cask but those documents don’t give you autonomy over the cask at the warehouse.
The person with autonomy can move a cask, bottle it, sell it, etc., and it’s the warehouse acknowledged delivery order that gives that autonomy and is the most important documentation in a cask purchase or sale.
If you don’t have a delivery order and are trying to track down or claim ownership of a cask you purchased then this guide may help.
What are the Key Scams and Red Flags to Watch Out For?
Price manipulation is the most prominent scam in the whisky cask industry. But it’s difficult to spot because, as we’ve just mentioned, getting a valuation is challenging.
We are contacted regularly by people who have overpaid for casks and are trying to work out what to do. But how do you stop that from happening? How much should you invest? Well, you go in at the lowest possible price you’re comfortable with; you can’t lose tens of thousands of pounds if you’ve not handed over tens of thousands of pounds in the first instance. You can also do a quick price check using our cask calculator—if the cost bottle price for a ten year old cask is coming out at £200 per bottle then you can start to get an idea that you may be being miss-sold.
Red flags to look out for are heavy sales tactics, no delivery orders, and phone calls out of the blue to say, “Oh, your cask has gone up in value. Do you want to buy another one?” Generally this call is to ladder you onto increasingly expensive casks; every scam that I’ve seen or been contacted about has been this style of increasingly expensive cask.
The biggest red flag is no delivery order; without a delivery order, definitely don’t buy. Read more about due diligence when buying a cask here.
Should I Invest in Ex-Sherry or Ex-Bourbon Casks?
There is no issue in buying either ex-sherry or ex-bourbon casks. The one thing that I would say to avoid is buying wine casks or other exotic cask types because they are unproven on the market.
The industry’s been using sherry casks for well over a hundred years and while it’s been using ex-bourbon casks for a shorter period of time both types of casks are tried and tested in terms of quality and demand. If you want to try a different type of cask because you enjoy it? Great; go for it. But if you’re looking at a cask as a pure investment then over a long term investment ex-bourbon or refill ex-sherry casks are the most reliable options.
Which Distilleries Offer the Best Investment Potential?
The distilleries that offer the best investment potential are ones that have got space to grow with marketing. Whisky is just marketing; the most expensive whiskies in the world are not the best whiskies, they’re just the ones that are being marketed the best.
If you’re looking purely at investment potential then don’t buy from new distilleries (I class a new distillery as being under 30 years old) because there’s a limit to how much that whisky can sell for that is set by the maximum age of the whisky they can produce.
Is Macallan’s 25 year old better than Arran’s 25 year old? In a blind tasting there’d be very little in it for most people, but Macallan can charge more because they’ve got a higher market position. This is simply because they’ve been around longer and can use their older age statement releases as aspirational halo products to drive prices up across their range. There is of course a chance that a newer distillery could break this trend and charge a premium for younger products, but this is a lower probability if you’re looking at pure investment potential.
The distilleries that offer the best investment potential however are not the likes of Macallan that have already marketed themselves to the top. Instead the middle of the market—between the new distilleries and the already premium ones—offers the ideal balance of initial cost, established market demand, and long term potential.
What is the “Angel’s Share” and How Does It Affect Value?
The “angel’s share” is the term for the average annual losses of whisky from a cask. A cask of whisky is not a sealed container but is a breathing living vessel that matures whisky through interaction with the wood and atmosphere.
The evaporation rate averages around 2% over the lifetime of a cask, with a range more like 1 to 4% year on year (and it can be up to 5 to 10% in the first couple of years of a cask’s life). In real terms this means your asset is slowly evaporating; the older the cask, the less whisky that you tend to have in there. You can monitor the angel’s share with a regauge, which can be requested through the warehouse where the cask is stored.
How Do I Sell My Cask When I Want to Exit the Investment?
When you come to sell a cask, the first thing to consider is whether it’s the right time for your cask. If you’ve had the cask for at least ten years and it is around, or over, 18 years old then the first step is to contact the warehouse to get a regauge.
The regauge results will tell you how much whisky is in the cask and the alcoholic strength of that whisky, you’ll be able to use this to get a valuation and offers for you cask.
Broadly speaking you have four options when you come to sell and each has its own benefits and issues:
- Selling through a broker
- Selling to a dealer
- Selling direct to an independent bottler
- Selling via a cask auction
Mark Littler Ltd is a broker, and we differ from a dealer in that we help you find a buyer and charge a commission, rather than a dealer who buys something to then mark up and sell on. The pros of working with a broker is that you are getting the current market price whereas a dealer will tend to be more conservative basing an offer on what they hope to get. The cons are that it can take a little longer.
Both a broker and dealer will usually help you set a price and will assist with the paperwork.
Selling a cask yourself directly to someone in the industry is another option for selling a cask. This puts you in control of the price and paperwork (which can be a pro or con depending on how you look at it) so you need some confidence in negotiating and managing the process but you can ensure you’re getting the full market price and not paying a commission.
The final option is selling at auction—if the warehouse where your cask is stored allows sale via auction. This is not the route we would suggest as it has very unreliable results however if you need to sell promptly regardless of the price then this could be an option.
You will notice that selling back to the distillery is not on this list. That’s because if a distillery does offer to buy casks back (and often they’re not interested) they usually significantly undervalue them. So if you do consider this route do get a second opinion first.
I have also left bottling off this list of options because bottling a cask is rarely the best way for private individuals to sell a cask of whisky. If bottling is something you are considering then ensure you understand the costs of bottling, the additional taxes due and the licenses you need. You can learn more about bottling a cask of whisky here.
Those were the 14 most frequently asked questions around cask investment. If your question wasn’t covered then you may find the answers in one of our comprehensive guides. If you are after bespoke advice about selling or buying casks of whisky then please do get in touch by emailing [email protected].
