What is the value of whisky to you? There is much talk of whisky speculation, investment, expanding markets, developing markets, collecting, consumption, branding and super-premium these days. Is it a coincidence that it all seems to have come at a time when I’ve just started a new job in a relatively youthful auction house? Or is my position a symptom of circumstance or, worse still, the ‘market’? I know for a fact that my job exists because its existence facilitates profit. We talk a lot about value these days. I see all the rants, raves and comments about it coagulating like puddles on the shores of social media. I hear it when I speak to the retailers. Margins, allocations and profits are getting tighter and tighter, the auctioneers are winning and the retailers are fighting up hill. Is this all because there is less and less of the old stuff to go around, the juicy old bottles that everyone wants. The spiraling auction prices and the increasing feeling that the old bottles and new releases are two separate worlds would seem to suggest so.

The star bottles in our latest auction. How many of us can now afford to obtain, let alone open, bottles such as these?

But there is a bigger picture here I think. All this increasing talk of value or perception of value seems indicative of a trending change in the way many of us think about whisky. How many of us can now afford to open old 1960s Laphroaigs or 1950s Macallans? These bottles have become tokens, they are symbolic of their perceived worth, in short, they are currency. Ten years ago there was McTears in Glasgow, they held whisky auctions no more than four times a year. Christie’s and Sotheby’s did fine wine auctions but that is something still far divorced from whisky in terms of the truly astronomical prices and quantities, it was then and it still is. Now we have the online specialist aucitoneers Whisky Auction, Scotch Whisky Auctions and more on the horizon no doubt. We have McTears (now on ten auctions a year), Bonhams and, most recently, Mulberry Bank Auctions, where I work. There will almost certainly be further additions to this list in the next year and I haven’t even mentioned all the smaller auction houses in Britain that do occasional whisky auctions or specialist sections of larger auctions dedicated to whisky. There has been an explosion of whisky at auction over the past decade, in both prices achieved and quantity sold. But what does it all mean?

One of the best illustrations of why whisky has value is Ardbeg Manager's Dram. Bottled in 1999 it was a single cask of astonishing quality and character. The bottles were practically given away at £69 a piece. Now enough people want one of these incredible bottles that the price is nudging £2000 a pop.

With straightforward analysis it means that the desire to drink great whisky, coupled with the cumulative effect of three decades worth of cheap to fairly priced, good to outstanding quality whiskies being steadily released around the world, has created a huge demand and an ever dwindling supply. Their inevitable consumption means there are more people who want to hoard/collect and drink than there are bottles left to satisfy these demands. It also means there are many people who kept or own these bottles, for whatever reason, and are increasingly persuaded to part with them, almost always because they seem too valuable to justify keeping. Or they were keen eyed enough to spot an opportunity and played it with an eye to raw investment. The bottom line is money has the power to exert influence over our perceptions of what something is for and what we are willing to do with it. I swore I would never part with the small selection of very special bottles I had gathered throughout the previous decade, but then in 2010 I had an overdraft and I badly wanted to go traveling . Needless to say I soon found out that I wasn’t so attached to them after all, I could no longer justify sitting on several thousand pounds worth of bottled liquid. Do I miss those bottles? No, not really, one or two that were unique and I’ll never see again, but I’ve been fortunate enough to taste most of them already in my lifetime and I’ll taste many more great drams so I don’t feel too precious about it. But the point is they evolved in my mind from potential bottled memories and stored olfactory beauty into the achievable fantasy of black ink on my bank statement instead of red and a few more stamps in my passport.

Unlike Whisky, it's impossible to put a price on the best experiences in your life. After the time I had in South America I'll never regret selling my bottles for a second.

People rant and rave about whisky being for drinking a lot these days, it is the understandable and ill informed reaction to the many discussions about collecting/investing/speculating (call it what you will). People seem awfully proud to blurt out their philosophy that ‘Whisky is for drinking not for collecting’ every time they hear of a bottle being stored in a dark cupboard rather than immediately cracked open with pristine abandon while the cork burns in the fire. Of course whisky is for drinking, it is after all a drink, that is the very reason these bottles are expensive. Forget the artificially expensive Dalmore (insert ludicrous latin name here) for a minute, these are different beasts altogether. I’m talking about the vast majority of older bottles and the more desirable, modern independent bottlings, these whiskies acquire great expense because people want to own and drink them (because word spread out from the many that already have). The number of people acquiring them for purely monetary purposes is nothing like the number of people who want to keep them with a view to one day drinking them.

There are more of these old bottles getting opened than you might imagine. That's another reason for their ever increasing value. (And yes I know it's a Cognac but give me a break.)

However, if you’ll allow me to play Devil’s advocate to myself for a moment there is a flip side. Whisky is for drinking. I come back to my original question, what is the value of whisky to you? Is it a drink that stokes the fires of great company and friendship? Is it grease to the cogs of late night imagination? Is it the ink that outlines and shades your greatest and darkest memories? Is it a liquid bound up in tears and laughter, one that toasts the fortunes and mourns the people and joys that happenstance cuts out of your life? This is where our passion for whisky often lies, it is born in the avenues of surprise and exploration and it is a glorious journey. But we are changing, these perceptions are being all too often forgotten and swept away in the face of the behemoth of money and its sticky fingers that latch onto every corner of our lives. We have made an enemy of our own passions. ‘Whisky’ is now an industry with sub-markets, markets forged by the very love we feel for the drink that started us on this journey in the first place. The prices now paid for the great bottlings are a measure of the length to which we are willing to go for our love of ‘the hard stuff’. At the end of the day these prices are paid because there are more than enough people with the money and the will to pay it who want these whiskies. The same money and keen willpower that has fired this expanding market for rare and desirable bottles.

When we speak of wine nowadays it suffers from an image of middle-class, Guardian-reading, bourgeois association. It is linked with wealth, food matching, Michelin stars and snobbery. The mainstream press chooses to forget in these instances (whenever it suits them) the vast quantities of people who nightly chastise their innards with litres of putrid Blossom Hill swill. The predominant and popular image is of finery and privilege. A shame that, amongst these two ends of the spectrum, is often lost the truth that wine was, and often remains, a grassroots, agricultural industry. One that requires great skill and offers simple and delicious reward beyond the obvious financial return. Wine’s rustic origins and proud role in the history of human decadence, zest for life and earned indulgence is often lost or forgotten amidst a global industry hell bent on image, price control and premium products aimed at premium clientele. Whisky it seems, in this sense, is not far behind. The only difference is whisky will never be as big as wine. The idea that a case of old whisky, even something like Malt Mill (God willing!) would match the price at auction of a case of 1870 Latour (if one should ever come up for sale), is somewhat ludicrous. Whisky is acting bigger than it is, and therefore it feels like it is bursting at the seems a little bit. It makes you wonder how much longer these markets can sustain themselves. How much higher in price can these top end Ardbegs and Port Ellens go? Whisky as an industry has always had its big ups and very big downs. It has also quite noticeably always failed to learn from its own history. Probably something to do with it being a long term product that requires great age and, as a result, the people that sell it are often replaced every ten-twenty years with a new set of people with big wide dollar signs in their eyes, all looking straight ahead into developing markets and never glancing over their shoulder to what has gone before. This specialist and rare whisky market is still a relatively new beast, I wonder how long before it, like the the rest of the industry at large has several times already, takes its first tumble? Is it just me or does it feel like we’re in those slow, steep, up-hill moments before the roller-coaster plunges…

A visual history of the Whisky industry.

I know that we all love whisky, with great passion. All this social media debating and all these blogs (including this one) wouldn’t exist without that love. I’ll be honest right now and say I’m not a fan of capitalism and the vast profiteering its structures can facilitate, despite the obvious fact that I am one of many who has undeniably reaped more than my fair share of its spoils over the years in the guise of privilege. With this in mind I have often struggled to reconcile my love of an increasingly expensive drink and the money I’ve paid for it on many an occasion, with the vastly unfair distribution of wealth on this planet. I suppose my musings today have been largely driven by these internal conflicts. Whatever it is, I am increasingly having to remind myself that whisky is, first and foremost, a source of joy, along with art, music, love, sex, films, expression, adventure, exercise, food of greater extravagance than is considered essential, literature and general festivities. These are the apps of life, not just to alleviate pain but to actively provide joy and decadence, to make life worth living. We have an abundance of them here in the west which is partly why so many of us are curdled by gnawing guilt. But the fact is we have them and we should not be ashamed to enjoy them so long as we appreciate our incredible good fortune to have them. I’m just sad to see that whisky is being transported ever upwards and away from these more humble spheres into realms where it is often all too easy to forget (or just to fucking expensive to remember) why we truly love it.

So, what is the value of whisky to you?

It’s my birthday today, I’m 26 years old, I already have grey hair on my head. But if this year of travel has taught me anything so far it’s that I absolutely no reason or cause to complain about anything in this life. So with that in mind we’ll skip all the usual crap people write about the imaginary woes of aging and get down some proper gibberish. I don’t really like birthdays, not my own anyway, it’s not a strong dislike but more or a complete indifference. I can enjoy them very much when I am in good company and I’m not adverse to mild celebration. I’m not not fussed either way. Having said that I do believe that it is a good opportunity to spoil yourself with a fine dram (or twelve). It also seems appropriate that while on the road where great drams are few and far between, a birthday is as good an opportunity as any to break out something special if you have it. I have something that I’ve been sitting on for a few months now and I think it’s time to break it open. I was planning to save it and open it with certain notorious friends in Paris later this year but, to be honest… it’s getting pretty heavy…

Huacachina, Peru. That well known spot for locating ancient and rare bottles of whisky.

When I was still in Pisco earlier this year we took a weekend trip to a place called Huacachina, it’s a fascinatingly bizarre spot but not the sort of place you’d expect to find antique bottles of whisky. I was in the bar one afternoon and I spied the above bottle sitting atop an old beer fridge behind the bar in plain view. Needless to say I had trouble believing what I was seeing at first. On closer inspection the bottle appeared very genuine and very old, the Royal Warrant states to ‘his majesty the king’ which places it any time before 1952. Although the bottle shape, label and spring cap all look decidedly 30s/40s to me. The wee Peruvian man at the bar who sold it to me (for 200 soles which is roughly £55) said he obtained it from a ‘grateful traveling Englishman’ or so the translation went. He was insistent that it was from 1914, although, seeing as this bottles’ pride of place was on the beer fridge, he didn’t exactly scream ‘whisky expert’. So I don’t know too much about it other than that it is pretty old and, mercifully, very genuine. I did worry as the lead foil seal was not present but after popping the spring cap and having a sniff it was clearly the real thing. I’ve tried quite a few different versions of old White Horse through the years but not one from before the 1950′s I don’t think, so this should be interesting. These old White Horse blends are very heavily dominated by Lagavulin and Malt Mill, two very birthday friendly distillates (probably).

If anyone at Diageo would care to take a note of that serial number on the label and check to see when this was bottled I'd be very grateful.

White Horse. Spring Cap. Peruvian Import. Bottled 1930s/40s. Proof/contents not known.

Colour: Gold

Nose: Old reeky peat, metal polish, minerals and cow stables at first sniffing. There is an obvious old bottle effect here with all the metallic aspects but it is also surprisingly potent and fresh as well, that’s spring caps for you I suppose. Gets quite mentholated with notes toothpaste, mouthwash and also some quite medicinal touches like antiseptic and Birch Beer. Very reminiscent of the old Mackies Ancient Scotch actually. The peat is pretty hefty here, very simmering, earthy and tarry with some huge notes of engine oil and old boilers in the background. A very powerful whisky considering the years it’s spent in bottle. Some dusty notes of coal and old sheds now with sheeps wool, wet rocks and flints. It is mainly on industrial, medicinal and peat aromas but there are a few glimmers of fruit still in there which give a startling complexity to the whole thing. Goes on with some soft notes of dung and compost (in a nice way), becomes a little vegetal and develops some sweetish notes of fudge and caramel. Brilliant stuff.

Palate: A massive barrage of fat oily peat, mixed nuts, damp sackcloth, candle wax and salty mead (?). Huge presence on the palate, just brilliant. After so many years the peat is powerful but so velvety and soft, like a luxurious peat glue being squirted round your mouth. Very oily with quite a few sub flavours that live up to the complexity of the nose very nicely. I could drink a lagoonful of this nectar, in fact I’m having to top up my sample as I type (well… it is my birthday). Further notes of fresh bread, spices, cloves, orange bitters, dark chocolate and eucalyptus all bubble through in time. Not much point in continuing this as it is degenerating into MaltPorn.

Finish: Very long with more truckfuls of peat, medicinal oils, seaweed, wet earth, mulch and some little flecks of green fruits.

Comments: The Mackie’s Ancient Scotch was the company’s Malt Mill based blend at this time while the White Horse was generally more Lagavulin based (although it is very likely that there are a few casks of Malt Mill in this bottling). This is really reminiscent of the Mackies, that huge fat peaty quality is pretty unforgettable. It is also quite striking how those dry seaweed notes are so similar to the modern 16yo Lagavulin. All in all a fascinating piece of history and an excellent dram, there is just nothing like this kind of whisky made anywhere any more, the texture and flavours are just incredible and so distinctively old school. Highly recommended birthday material.

Score: 93/100 (same as the Mackies)

On a personal level 2010 has been a year of extreme ups and downs, thankfully whisky was always part of the ups so I look back on the last twelve months and am happy to see them filled with many great and glorious drams, memories and friends. Probably the biggest whisky development for me was starting this blog which I have enjoyed very much so far and will continue to develop it through 2011. The tastings aspect of it will change quite dramatically in the new year as I am about to go traveling and I suspect there are not quite as many samples of rare and interesting malt whisky to be found in South America (although you never know). In the coming months you can expect to find more scribbling about such spirits as Pisco, Cachaca, Rum, Tequila, Mezcal and various American Whiskeys. However in the meantime I have decided to save the best of 2010 till last. Many writers/commentators/bloggers like to do a top drams of the year thing at this time and while I would like to do that I’m really not up to speed with current releases enough and I’d much rather just do some notes on the one dram that stands out above all others, not necessarily in terms of sheer quality but for its wonderful history and gobsmacking emotional power. It’s this old baby right here…

Mackie's Ancient Brand

Malt Mill!!! Well sort of, actually its not Malt Mill but rather a blend that used Malt Mill as a base malt. This was opened by Serge at his 50th Birthday party much to everyone’s delight. It was bottled for the American market sometime around the early forties and bears a spring cap. There was also a UK version called ‘Mackie’s Ancient Scotch’ and even a version that stated ‘Malt Mill’ on the label although Nick Morgan from Diageo assures us that Malt Mill was never bottled as a single malt (a huge bummer for the legions of whisky loons that would invert their own grandmother to taste the stuff) so this is probably as close as we’ll ever get to trying Malt Mill. But what is Malt Mill and who is this Mackie character? Well…

The site of the old Malt Mill distillery as it appears today at Lagavulin.

In the early 1900s there was a famous whisky man named Peter Mackie, a resourceful, forceful and notorious whisky maker and seller who was fortunate enough to be the agent for both Lagavulin (a distillery he owned) and the neighboring Laphroaig. However in 1907 he lost the agency for Laphroaig and out of spite and frustration decided to make his own Laphroaig up the road at Lagavulin. However as we all know by now it is, for various mystical and scientific reasons, pretty much impossible to completely replicate another distillery’s make at a different site. So Mr Mackie did not make Laphroaig but he did end up making Malt Mill and he must have found a use for it because it was made as a single malt until 1962. It was said to be one of the most heavily peated spirits ever produced, with floor malted barley dried with exceptionally old, deep dug peat. Direct fired stills, worm tubs and long ferments would all have contributed to an exceptionally dense and old style make. I asked Nick Morgan from Diageo about the possibility of any Malt Mill existing in sample bottles anywhere in the archives. I thought this might be a real possibility as blenders and excisemen were always taking samples for the labs and several could still exist. The answer was a not too encouraging ‘probably not’ but not a definite no so that’s something at least. There is one known sample in existence, a tiny bottle of new make spirit from the last distillation in 1962, a clear glass bottle sealed with red wax that is occasionally displayed at the distillery. Needless to say, persuading Diageo to open this bottle would be like trying to get the Queen to cameo in a porn film.

If you tinker with the Google-tron it will inevitably regurgitate this image for you, apparently an old bottle of Malt Mill, if Diageo are correct this must either be a blend or, far more likely, a great, big, dirty, stinking FAKE! So it seems that the only thing we can do (obviously when I say ‘we’ I mean me, sorry about that) is taste this Mackie’s stuff.

Unfortunately reading the back label reveals it is undoubtedly a blend. Every repetition of the word 'blended' reads like a stab in the palate

Mackie’s Ancient Brand. US Import. Rotation early 1940s. Spring Cap. 4/5 Quarts. 86.8 proof. (Malt Mill blended probably with Lagavulin and, sadly, some grain whisky also, impossible to know for sure though what the mix is.)

Colour: Dark, dirty gold with a real greenish tinge. (This is probably from the corruption of the metal and paper underside of the spring cap seal.)

Nose: Well this is the most peaty blend I’ve ever encountered, it jumps out of the glass and across the room before you even stick your nose in there. In fact it is a good deal peatier than many ‘heavily peated’ malts, that intense aroma of raw, root, earthy, dark peat is more pronounced and intense than anything you’ll find current bottlings of Octomore or Supernova, they appear positively limp wristed by comparison to this thing. Massive notes of seashore, boiled seaweed, wet dogs, thick, simmering, crusty peat, tincture, engine oil, peat oil, grist, malt barns, green olives in brine and some fruity notes of fig rolls and dried apricots as well. Sultanas, menthol, steel wool and other beautiful old style metallic notes of rusty iron, graphite and pencil shavings. Camphor, seashore, hessian, minerals, soot, various spices, a little soap and iodine. Very old school, like an old OB Lagavulin 12yo but with more oomph.

Palate: Soft delivery but again the peat flavours are massive and concentrated, very coastal, oily and now a little waxy as well with even more naked minerality. Green notes and more metallic characters with some raisins, creosote, tar, fishnets, kreels, cordite, eucalyptus, aloe vera, white spirit, muesli and old workshops and farmyard flavours. Very immense and very old school, quite incredible after so long in bottle, something to be said for spring caps. Further notes of earth and medicine with salt and pepper and more simmering spiciness. Green fruity flourishes in the background and becomes eventually quite elegant with some notes of varnish and beeswax.

Finish: Long, oily and, yes, very peaty. Beautiful metallic notes, menthol, medicine and seawater notes.

Comments: I am reliably informed that this is very similar to an old 1950′s rotation bottle of Lagavulin, if this is so it would probably mean that Malt Mill was quite a bit heavier than Lagavulin, if you can imagine such a thing. Anyway there is no way to know for sure what the make up of this blend is but it definitely contains a high proportion of Malt Mill and in terms of taste, you’d be forgiven for saying it was 100% malt. It’s a beast.

Score: I’m reluctant to score this because it’s such a pointless thing to score really. In purely olfactory analytical terms I think it’s worth 93/100 but on an emotional level and considering I’m probably never going to taste such a thing again, then it’s more like 100/100. Huge thanks to Serge for opening this quaffable little time capsule.

There is always one last dram to be had for the patient ones among us...

Now, there is one last thing to be done. It is around this time each year that people hand out awards, best dram, best distillery, that kind of fluff. Anyway I have a wee award to be given out, not your average one though, as someone who sells a lot of bottles of whisky I get the opportunity to read many labels and marketing bumpf. So it is with great honor that I announce the first winner of the ‘Whisky Online Whisky Bull Shit Of The Year Award’

There have been many valiant attempts this year, the marketing droids just seem to push themselves further and further each year, Glengoyne, Laphroaig and Jura all made valiant efforts, as did repeat offenders and old favourites Bruichladdich but lets celebrate a newcomer instead, the winner by a mile is Tobermory! Their vomit inducing effort on the booklet enclosed with this year’s 15yo expression was whisky bullshit of the highest order. In case you missed it I’ll recreate it here in all its bowel-knotting glory.

“There are only a small number of bottles available around the world of this jewel-like 15 year old dram, but its exceptional provenance and the craftsmanship it is imbued with, are perceptible in every rare drop.

Perhaps inspired by being in the world-famous Tobermory distillery (founded 1798 and still the island’s only distillery), our Master Blender Ian MacMillan, a man of 35 years’ experience, is an obsessively dedicated artisan and perfectionist. Not content with the standard 15 year period of aging, he developed a rare dual-location-maturation; first transferring the spirit into gloriously refined Gonzales Byass Oloroso Sherry casks and then painstakingly moving each cask from the mainland, where the whisky develops, back to the island for its final year. Here they look out on to the Sound Of Mull allowing the delicate liquids within to absorb the Inner Hebrides’ life-giving ocean mists.”

What a piece of work I think you’ll agree, as soon as you’ve finished with the sick bucket I invite you to enjoy one last time that most breathtaking of closing phrases “the inner hebrides’ life giving ocean mists.” What a money shot that was, think of the marketing offices the length and breadth of the whisky world full of young executives tentatively placing an old service revolver to their temples as they see in one line the ultimate potential of whisky bullshit laid out in Godlike glory before them. Unattainable, unbeatable and suitably incomprehensible, how could anyone top that? Tune in next year to find out.

From all of us at whisky online, have a fantastic hogmanay and all the best for the new year. I hope you all start 2011 as you mean to continue, I know I will.

Slante!