Advice needed

[Lorenzo]

My daughter received a hogshead as a christening present 10 years ago. She was given 149.1 litres of pure alcohol.

Last year I enquired about selling the malt whiskey but I found that it was likely to cost me more than she would receive.

Can anyone give any advice?

Will this ever go up in value or will the Angel just drink it all?

And, the storage comapny have now doubled the cost of storing and insuring it.

Hopefully someone can help.

[John]

Hi Lorenzo

Whether it goes up in value depends on what whisky it is.

A lot of people do not realise that there is two major payouts involved when purchasing a cask of whisky.

First payout is when you initially pay for the cask, the spirit and usually 8 to 10 years of insurance and warehouse rental.

The second major payout is when you decide your cask has reached maturity, you will pay for bottling and labelling, plus a sizeable chunk in Excise Duty. I see you are located in Spain so i would assume there would be sizable transport costs to get the whisky to Spain if that is what you where planning.

I would think that most people would bottle their whisky after 10 years to avoid additional storage and insurance costs. Unless you have a rare, collectable sought after whisky i would say the value of the whisky will not increase by much in the next couple of years.

The advice i usually give to anyone considering buying a cask of whisky is:

A cask is best purchased by a group or family rather than by an individual.

If the only reason you are purchasing a cask is as an investment, then don't purchase one.

One option would be to sell the cask. There are independent bottlers who may buy it from you. When i have more time i will see if i can find some contact details for some who does this.

John

[Lorenzo]

John

That is sound advice and if only my friend had spoken to you 11 years ago then he might have given a different christening present.

When he first bought it he was under the impression it would go up in value, one could say that there was potential for a case of mis-selling or mis-representation.

Still we are where we are and I will endeavour to sell it for the best price for my daughter.

[John]

Hi Lorenzo

I dont know if you have sold your cask yet, anyway I have a couple of website addresses for you to visit, these companies buy casks.

http://www.adelphidistillery.com/casksale
http://www.quartercasks.com/contact.htm

There are few more independent bottlers that do buy casks but i had a quick look at there websites but cannot find any info on this but it still may be worth contacting them.

For a list of names of well known independent whisky bottlers see this page:
http://www.scotchmaltwhisky.co.uk/shop-by-independent-bottler.htm

Just put the name of the bootler into google they should all have their own website at which you can contact them.

Sorry for the slow response.

John