Jetgala - MAR-MAY 2023

83 L I Q U I D G O L D by Nimmi Ma l ho t ra “If there are only 250 bottles, every time a bottle is opened, that’s 0.4 percent of the production gone. For some of them, there’s hardly any left in the market,” says Adam Bilbey, global head of wine and sales at Christie’s. In whisky, as in all collectables items, rarity builds up over time, and naturally, the prices escalate. Whisky investment is on the rise, and among the myriad categories of “passion assets” like classic cars, fine wine, art and watches, whisky has outperformed them all. Notably, fine wine fared better last year than whisky, but over the last decade, the whisky category registered an incredulous 428 percent growth (Knight Frank’sWealth Report 2022).  We are talking Scottish and Japanese whisky mainly here, collectable and covetable not just by dint of prestige and age but by its rarity and limited availability, and of late, packaging.  Consider theYamazaki 55Year Old, the oldest release from the House of Suntory. Distilled in 1960 and bottled in 2020, only 100 bottles were released outside Japan. Its packaging detail spoke of Japanese Karuizawa Thousand Arrows series 1980–1982 PHOTO: CHRISTIE’S craftsmanship at its best: a crystal decanter engraved with “Yamazaki”, the age numbers etched with real gold dust and lacquer finishes, with each bottle presented in a bespoke wood box made from Japanese mizunara wood and coated with Suruga lacquer.  In August 2020, one of the bottles sold at Bonham’s Hong Kong for just over S$1 million. Later, at Amsterdam Schipol airport, another fetched a similar price, making it one of the most coveted bottles of Japanese whisky.   “People like to have their whisky collections at home. It’s something that you can really show off,” says Bilbey. The cask vs bottle argument  Collector’s pride aside, investing in casks and barrels presents significant advantages too. Rickesh Kishnani notes, “From an investment point of view, barrels or casks really outperform bottles.” Kishnani is the co-founder of the RareWhisky Fund and, prior to this, ran the world’s first private equity fund based on rare and old whiskies. The fund successfully closed in late 2021.  The arguments against bottles do stack up.A cask of whisky holds 200 to 300 bottles and matures with time, but once a 15-year-old is bottled, it does not age any further. Besides, not many have space to house an extensive whisky collection, Right: Brora scotch whisky distillery reopens after 38 years Far right: Brora 1981 from Diageo PHOTOS: DIAGEO