“How much can you make from a whisky cask investment?”
That is one of the questions most buyers ask at some point during any call about buying whisky casks. The honest answer is that it depends on so many factors that the answer usually takes at least five minutes to run through. It depends far more than which distillery filled the cask; purchase price, cask size, holding period, age when you buy and sell the cask, variations in the angel’s share, how you want to exit and more all shape the final number you can expect. But as with all investments, returns are never guaranteed.
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What’s more, the gap between headline appreciation figures and actual net profit is often significant because how you look at returns and which casks you use as examples also make a huge difference to the figures produced.
At Mark Littler Ltd, we help customers buy and sell whisky casks, but we also maintain a suite of tools for cask buyers to use for their independent due diligence. For our work around demystifying cask purchases we have worked with Which? and have been featured in The Guardian, The Telegraph, BBC Radio4 and others, and have also received an honorary mention in Scottish Parliament for his work with Protect Your Cask.
This guide works through the fundamentals of how casks are valued in the industry, the drivers of value over time, and the risks of buying and owning casks, so you can assess any cask opportunity with clarity rather than blind trust.
As a Spear’s 500 Top Recommended Whisky Advisor Mark Littler Ltd is perfectly positioned to provide expert advice on all stages of buying, owning and selling casks of scotch whisky.
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How Scotch Whisky Casks Are Valued?
In the whisky industry, casks are valued using a price per litre of alcohol. That then translates into a whole cask price depending on what’s in the cask.
For example let’s look at new make whisky at £15 per litre of alcohol.
At 63% ABV (standard new make fill strength in scotch) that could equal around £1,890 for a barrel (assumed 200litre fill) to around £4,725 for a butt (assumed 500litre fill). In this case the butt is more than twice as expensive because it contains more than twice the amount of whisky.
The variables that impact the price per litre of alcohol for a cask isn’t just the distillery reputation and age, it also includes the cask type, ABV (alcohol strength) and fill levels. All of these factors combine to give an assigned price per litre of alcohol for a cask.
By looking at a price per litre of alcohol instead of a whole cask price you can get a much clearer picture of value and how it changes between casks of different sizes and over time.
What Drives A Cask’s Value Over Time?
For whisky maturing in a cask the price per litre will generally increase with time because older whisky has traditionally been more valuable than younger whisky. That is the principle behind whisky cask investment.
The increase in value per litre of alcohol is usually slow in the first 12 years. This is because young whisky is not classed as a premium product and is not yet scarce.
Scarcity is driven by the amount of whisky on the market at a given age—availability is generally high for casks under 12 as that’s what the bulk of the whisky market is made up of—and also by the impacts of natural evaporation simply meaning that there is less older whisky remaining in a cask after the “angels” have had their share for 18+years.
The premium perception is a little more subjective. Older whisky is generally seen as better due to maturation effects, however studies have suggested quality actually peaks around 18 years yet the increase in value continues past 18.
How The Angel’s Share Impacts A Cask’s Value?
The amount of whisky in a cask and (in Scotland) the ABV naturally drop over time—on average evaporation is between 1 and 4% per year, which is often cited as 2% over the lifetime of a cask.
This evaporation means that while the price per unit generally trends up, the volume trends down.
For most of a cask’s lifetime the increase in price per litre is faster than the drop in unit volume, resulting in older casks being more valuable than younger. It’s worth noting that at some point this does shift, which is why you cannot mature a cask forever.
The rate of losses varies cask to cask. This difference is true even for casks of the same age and size, from the same distillery and matured in the same warehouse.
How That Impacts Returns Rates For Cask Investments?
Evaporation is an inherent vice of owning and maturing whisky casks. You can’t stop it and arguably you wouldn’t even if it were possible as it is part of the maturation process.
The reality is however that over the long 10 to 20+ year periods recommended for optimum cask investment potential, the variation in evaporation rates between casks can cause tens of thousands of pounds worth of difference between casks.
The price per litre of alcohol also increases at different average rates over the lifetime of a cask. That means the rate of increase in value (and how that translates into potential returns) is going to vary depending on what age the cask was when you purchased it and how long you owned it.
Even for casks from the same distillery, looking at returns from casks held over 30 years is meaningless for someone who intends to mature a cask for 12 to 15 years. That is before you even get into the difficulty of comparing results between distilleries, or for different cask sizes.
If you’d like to see some examples of real cask price variation—between ages and sizes—then head to the case study at the end of this beginners guide to cask investment.
Are Whisky Casks A Good Investment?
Mark Littler has been helping customers sell casks since 2016. Generally, our results show that customers who bought their casks 10+ years ago are selling them for a profit.
Past results suggest that if you buy a healthy cask for the real market price and hold it for the long term then on average it increases in value.
There are exceptions.
Just like any stocks and shares ISA you take out will give you a spread of potential positive results but still have to let you know that there is a chance you’ll get back less than you put in, casks also have risks.
The three main reasons we see for people losing money on casks are:
Length of investment — cask owners coming back to market prematurely and trying to sell a cask that is too young and still in its slow growth phase.
- Way to mitigate: aim to get a cask to at least 18 years old and/or a minimum ten year hold depending on the age you bought the cask.
Not monitoring the cask — casks owners coming back to market having forgotten about their cask and the ABV has dropped below 40%.
- Way to mitigate: you can monitor a cask’s fill levels via a regauge, requested via the warehouse. We suggest every 3 to 5 years is a good balance, but more frequently may be beneficial for older casks or more risk adverse owners.
Paying too much — unfortunately this is most common with older, premium casks where value is harder to check.
- Way to mitigate: the whisky cask market is not set up for private owners and so independent valuations are difficult to find. One option is to use our Cask Calculator to create a per bottle price (one that includes taxes) to see whether there is scope for long term value increase.
Ultimately if you want to know what you could make from a whisky cask purchase it’s best to look at the potential for a specific cask.
Doing your own checks
- Find out what the current price per litre of alcohol is.
- Then ask if the broker has an example of the price per litre of alcohol for that cask at 18 years old.
You can stop there or take it one step further and model a range of evaporation rates over your intended hold period.
You can do this in Excel or Google sheets using =(bulk litres)*0.98^(intended hold period) to get 2% per year average drop. You’ll then need to estimate ABV the same way in order to calculate the litres of alcohol after your modeled time period. Times that by the expected price per litre and see how the values fit with your requirements.
Just like the range of potential for a stocks and shares investment will be broad, and not guaranteed, this is just a way to get a feel for the potential and whether that fits in with your attitude toward risk.
If you want to discuss a specific cask opportunity or get an independent view on a cask you have been offered, get in touch with the team at Mark Littler Ltd.
We broker casks impartially, with full transparency on fees and no interest in selling you something that does not match your needs or intentions. For practical next steps and a beginner’s orientation you can also head across to our general Whisky Cask Investment Guides, where we have curated our must read articles and most as questions in one place.
