Rare Whisky Outperformed Gold As An Investment Last Year

By way of comparison, the average value of wine gained a meager .04% in 2015, while gold actually fell in price at a less meager 10%. A 14% annual gain also dwarfs all the world’s major financial markets, with only the Shanghai Composite coming even close to its 9.4% growth in 2015. Even outside the realm of dollars and cents, the rising fortunes for rare whisky are easy to grasp – The Guardian says that 43,458 bottles of single malt scotch were sold in trackable open markets, which was 28% more than in the previous year. It’s all part of a trend that’s very good for whisky traders and bad for anyone hoping to grab a bottle of something nice in the whisky department at a steal. Here’s Andy Simpson of whisky site Rare Whisky 101, as quoted in The Guardian: Like all markets, the whisky boom won’t stay a boom forever. The Japanese whisky market experienced similar circumstances last year as well, but eventually the skyrocketing prices settled back down again as the market was saturated with top-dollar whisky and outrageous resale prices. For now, though, the field of rare scotch whisky continues to grow, with higher and higher premiums going to older vintages even of previously lower-tier distilleries as new bottles of the stuff become harder to find. One startling figure for whisky collectors illustrates why that is: Of the ten most valuable distilleries for whisky, only three are still open for business.