- [Ju] This whisky costs $30,000. It's a single malt. Single malt whisky is one of the most revered spirits in the world. It's exclusively made from barley, which is quite a cheap product. So how does one bottle
get to be so expensive? Over the past 50 years, single malts have become increasingly popular. Scottish single malt exports
grew by 14.2% in 2017, to just over $1.5 billion. One of the main players
in the single malt market is Glenfiddich, whose parent company achieved a 1.2 billion
pound turnover last year. - [Ian] We are selling
1.2 million 9-liter cases of Glennfiddich around the world. We have 180 markets around the world that we generally service. In 1963, we started to commercially sell single malt, but also
to promote it actively outside of Scotland. But we gave the single malt category the biggest push it's
ever had in its life. - [Ju] We were fortunate enough to try a 12-year-old bottle, worth $36, and a 50-year-old vintage, worth $30,000. - [Ju] The 12-year-old
whisky was certainly sweet and pleasant to drink, but I was expecting the
more expensive bottle to taste out of this world
to justify its price. - [Ju] Wow, really distinct. - [Ian] You can taste much
more European oak in this one. - [Ju] Yeah, the distinction
between the flavors I think is a lot smoother and lot oakier. There seems to be truth
that the longer the alcohol is in there, the smoother it tastes, so the more deserving
of the expensive price. But that can't be the only thing that justifies one bottle being close to $29,000 more than another. Another reason is that making single malt is an extremely difficult
process to get right. Barley is ground down and
added to spring water. Heated to 64 degrees
Celsius, it turns to sugar, dissolving into a fine sweet,
tangy liquid called wort. The wort is drained, cooled,
and passed into washbacks. This is heated and condensed
in copper wash stills for its first distillation, and a second time in spirit stills. The spirit trickles into the spirit safe, ready for maturation, and then it's batched in
casks with spring water. Casks spend years in the warehouse maturing into a single malt. - [Ian] So the secret to the quality of single malt is consistency. You've got to nail down your production so that your unique spirit
comes off exactly the same, and you have a spirit
quality team that are actively looking at
[that], and we also nose the unique spirit on-site as well. - [Ju] But there's more. An age 30 maturation can have 30% to 40% of the alcohol evaporated in the barrel, or 1% each year of the whisky's life. This is because of something
called 'angel's share,' the natural evaporation of the liquid into the atmosphere over time. So older whiskies are expensive not just because they're old but because there's less of them left. There's one more factor we haven't touched upon yet: status. - [Ian] It's all about
the equity of the brand and the perception of the consumer about how much they're
prepared to pay for our brands. I think, in general,
younger people want quality. They want good shoes, good clothes, nice cars, nice houses, and they want to be drinking single malt. - [Ju] And it's not just
store-bought bottles. One factor that's driving up the price of single malts is a
booming collector's market. A bottle of the Macallan 1926 60-year-old recently sold for $1.5 million in auction, marking the largest single
sale ever for a bottle. Christie's international director of wine, Tim Tiptree, oversaw the sale. - It was one of 40 bottles
produced from a single cask that was distilled in 1926
and then bottled in 1986. It was a hand-painted bottle, so I think it does add a
little to the desirability, but it's the intrinsic
quality of the whisky inside the bottle that
is driving the demand. - [Ju] But scotch has
some serious competitors. Alongside China, India, Taiwan, Ireland, Japan is one of the world's major producers of unblended whiskies. - "For relaxing times,
make it Suntory time." - [Ju] You might have
heard of 'Suntory time.' Suntory own the Yamazaki
Distillery in Osaka Prefecture. The rarity of their produce
drove prices sky high. - The Japanese have come to the fore, about four or five years
ago, one of their whiskies a Yamazaki was named the
best whisky in the world, and that created a lot of noise around the Yamazaki single malt. But Yamazaki's owned by Suntory, and the bulk of what they
produce goes to blends, so they had insufficient
whisky in their warehouses to actually continue
on the success of what Yamazaki achieved in that one year. What dictates the price, the
value of a whisky sometimes is the exclusivity, so the less there was, it drove the price up to the point where Yamazaki was
being sold off at three, four times the normal value. - [Ju] But blended whiskies can also reach quite a high price. Will they ever be as
expensive as single malt? - We don't normally
sell much blended whisky in our auctions, single
malts are much more rare, they are much more individualistic so, whereas blended whisky is typically, generally more produced in larger volumes and also is more homogenous in the actual style and taste profile.
There's a lot of bros out there with dat crypto
Because it sits in barrels for so damn long. Longer it sits, the more the cost accrues.
You spend tens of thousands of dollars producing a product, and then can't sell it for 20 years? Shits gonna be expensive when you get around to selling it.
Taxes. That’s why, Scottish tax law.
50 Year old Whisky - $30,000
125 Year old Port - $5,500 USD https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2021/05/taylors-launches-priceless-125-year-old-rare-single-harvest-port/
Maybe the Whisky is a little overpriced?