CALL OF THE CASK

Buying your own cask is a dream for many whisky aficionados, but make sure you do your homework first, says Blair Bowman

Dishing out whisky advice is Blair Bowman's speciality – be sure to read on if you're looking to buy your own cask

Owning a cask of whisky, with your name on it, is the ultimate luxury. Each of the 20 million casks maturing in Scotland at any one time is unique. All single malt scotch whisky is, by law, only made from water, malted barley and yeast but this doesn’t mean it is homogenous. Yet the nature of wood being an organic material, the fact that coopers build the casks by hand, and the umpteen variables in the distillation process mean that even if multiple casks are filled at the same distillery, at the same time, there will be an individuality to each cask.

You may have seen several companies offering whisky casks as an investment on social media. Many make sweeping statements about a Return on Investment that is better than gold and which outperforms the stock market, but I’d take their claims – and their whiskies – with a good pinch of salt.

While this is one way to own a cask these are typically marketed to ‘flip’ in several years so you can, if you are lucky, realise a return on your investment.

But if you want to actually taste the whisky from your cask, there are a few options. Big brand distilleries rarely sell directly to consumers, so you would have to purchase from a broker if you wanted to source a cask from a well known distillery of already matured whisky or recently filled spirit. I offer this to private clients but it can be a complex route as you will also be responsible for the bottling and everything else to do with the cask following the initial purchase.

Another option which is proving very popular is to buy directly from one of the new distilleries, many of which offer private casks direct to individuals or groups/clubs. This gives them some cash flow while they are waiting for their whisky to mature but also means the customer can get in early and have a piece of liquid history with one of the distillery’s first casks.

However, the prices and costs vary considerably from distillery to distillery. The prices range from around £1,000 for a 30 litre cask from the Isle of Raasay Distillery, all the way up to north of £10,000 for an Oloroso Hogshead from Ardnahoe.

Many new distilleries release a fixed number of casks for private sales each year, so when they are gone, they are gone. Some only offer one choice of wood or spirit type but a few offer a whole suite of options. Holyrood Distillery’s unique Custom Cask Programme starts with a ‘flavour consultation’ at the distillery, after which you get to select the barley, yeast, distillation approach and cask. If that gives you too many choices, they have created a menu of seven flavour types to select from.

The Isle of Raasay Distillery also has many cask options, and as well as different cask sizes, you can choose to fill a cask from named Kentucky distilleries, virgin oak or ex-Bordeaux red wine casks.

The final number of bottles will depend on cask size and the amount of Angels’ Share evaporation, but you could end up with 200-300 bottles of mature whisky.

Or you could buy a share of a cask, a service offered by the Craft Whisky Club, with prices starting at around £55 (the casks are bottled once all the shares are sold). I sampled a few of their ‘shares’ recently and particularly enjoyed their Glen Moray 12-year-old, ex-Red Wine Cask (£57 per bottle) and the Cambus 31-year-old single grain whisky (£139 per bottle). This fractional ownership model means you don’t need to worry about the complexities of cask ownership, just enjoy your whisky when it is bottled.

It is worth checking the fine print of the Terms and Conditions if you do decide to buy a cask. Typically, the initial investment does not include any future costs, apart from the insurance and storage costs for the initial agreed maturation period. However, bottling costs, duty and VAT will be due when you do come to the bottle and can cost more than the initial investment.

Some distilleries may offer to buy back the cask but then the whole point of purchasing it was so that you could have your own personalised bottles of whisky for friends and family. And while most cask buyers decide not to sell them back to the distillery, it is worth noting that there are usually strict terms prohibiting any selling of these bottles, which are strictly for personal and private consumption, not for retailing.

Similarly, it may be the case that you don’t actually own the ‘wood’ and that you only purchased the liquid. This allows the distillery to use the cask again for another filling but means that you won’t be able to have the cask end hung on the wall of your living room, assuming that you had that in mind while sipping on your own bottle of whisky.

“Cask prices range from £1,000 for a 30L Raasay cask to over £10,000 for an Ardnahoe hogshead