How Much Should You Pay For a Cask of Macallan Whisky

The Lack of Market Data on the Value of Casks of Whisky

There are no publicly available indexes or price guides about the value of Macallan casks, or any casks of scotch whisky. Those inside the industry have access to some general cask prices but even in the industry it is a case of building your own database of the value of casks, some of which are sold on a regular basis and some might only appear every few years.

There are reasons for the lack of public resource. Largely, it is down to the fact that casks are the whisky industry’s raw product and it doesn’t serve them to let consumers know the values of the whisky before it goes into a bottle. Also, in the same way that a shop that serves the trade and public might have prices hidden so they can give their best customers more competitive prices, public facing costs remove pricing flexibility for distilleries.

The privately owned cask market is a fraction of the larger whisky market, but it is still a significant and growing industry. You may wonder why cask brokers and dealers don’t create a database. Partly this is a proprietary issue, where brokers may not want to share the prices they have achieved for casks. Mostly it is variability that prevents the production of a database for the value of privately owned casks. No two casks are alike because of the variations caused by maturation: primarily liquid and ABV loss, but also the development of colour, flavours and styles that make a whisky average or amazing. This variation makes a meaningful index almost imposible to create.

For instance, a cask of Macallan 1995 which has 210 bulk litres remaining at 52% ABV will be more commercial than an almost identical cask at 48.5% ABV. They also have a different quantity of alcohol and therefore market potential, which translates into a different price per unit of alcohol (how casks are valued) and total casks price.