Buy This Whisky Now or You’ll Regret It

The Whisky Release isn’t for a few weeks but a few bottles of the investment-grade gem are hiding in plain view right now.

As a starting point, let me be 100 percent clear: I think whisky is for drinking, not investing. Just as Ferraris are for driving, not for rubbing with diapers. But I’d also be lying if I told you I didn’t keep a casual eye on the crazy things that are happening with prices for high-end spirits (like someone paying $1,100,000 USD  for a single bottle of The Macallan last month) and if I’m spending a significant amount on a bottle, its potential financial upside always creeps into my thought process.For starters, The Macallan is the Ferrari (and the Porsche and the Maserati) of single malts when it comes to investing. It dominates the top of the market like no other whisky, but its more “reasonably” priced bottles can likewise be quite sage investments. Take the recent Edition series, which is a collaboration with interesting people in other fields. Edition#1 was released in 2015 (it actually never made it to Canada) with a price point of just under $100 and it’s now worth $1,000 on the secondary market. That’s not a bad rate of return for three years. Edition #2 came out a few years later with a higher price tag (now more in the $150 range) and has now mostly disappeared from the market. And Edition #4 will be released in the upcoming BCLDB Whisky release on November 3 for $165.But here’s the catch…there’s still a few bottles of of Edition #3 left on the shelves (for $160), but they’ll soon be gone….and that’s where a wise investor sees opportunity. Will it increase tenfold in the next three years? Probably not, but if you keep it in the box and don’t break the seal my guess it will beat the S&P for the next five years. And if it doesn’t….it’s a lovely whisky with rich fruit cake notes with pear and Granny Smith playing supporting roles. Win-win.