値打ちが戻る - Value returning

Life’s been crazy. It happens. Some of the fortunate flows didn’t materialize as expected. But at least in the mean time there has been whisky (news).

The primary thing I think we should start with is another crazy Hong Kong auction! This time, a full set of the Hanyu Cards Series, selling for a whopping HK$11.9 million (US$1.5 million). Sure, it’s a lot more sensible to pay that for 54 bottles than when someone paid more than half that for one bottle of Yamazaki 55 but still nearly 50% above the mid range estimate.

To start a trend here, let’s check off the boxes of that last blog entry and see what we can learn from this event.

圧巻 Immediate Impact:

It’s another feather in the cap for Hanyu as a ghost distillery, and another indication of the collectibility of their whiskies. So Hanyu will likely fly off the shelves where people can find them. It’s not as shocking as the Yamazaki auction - this one had escalated by around 60% from a similar auction last year and there is a relatively set price for the Cards set. I’d expect downrange Hanyu, or even individual Cards bottles to lift in price as people see this going on. I wouldn’t be surprised to see individual Cards bottles in the range of HK$200,000 (US$26,000; JPY2.75 million) or possibly higher.

余震 Secondary Effects:

This is where it gets really interesting!

The Cards series? Not like you need telling, but it’s put together by Akuto Ichiro - the founder of the Chichibu distillery! He also owns Venture Whisky - the custodians of the last remaining casks of Hanyu and distributors of Ichiro’s Malt. Did we need a further extension of the Chichibu / Ichiro’s Malt brands, which is the closest that Japan has to a Springbank-like following? Probably not. Either way, it moves the needle little - effectively a priced-in expectation. Again, Chichibu & Ichiro’s Malts, especially the slightly rarer & pricier versions will likely see a small price hike from name recognition alone.

投資有価 Investment Management:

Buy a Card if you can find it and hope for another 60%+ bump? It’s likely the closest thing you will get to a safe investment, if US$30,000 a bottle doesn’t phase you. But collecting a full set looks almost impossible.

In diagonal plays, the Chichibu bottles were already crawling up in price on store shelves (in Hong Kong at least) before this all happened. Getting a bottle in the next few months will not be impossible, but could prove difficult. Perhaps worth waiting a year or two, and check if you can save up the extra cash to start getting into the rumored 10-year bottlings of Chichibu which will likely hit markets in 2021 and 2022.

More interesting is probably seeing if other smaller distilleries will start looking at the market for opportunities to set up collections. Snapping up limited age statement bottles from older, small distilleries or new collectible expressions for the really recent upstarts might be worth the effort. But as always, do your due diligence and consider which distilleries have the best opportunities and how they fit into your investment style.

自己投資 Personal Investment:

I’ve been lucky enough to add a slightly lower end Chichibu to my collection (still taking 7-8% of my portfolio though)! So from this perspective I couldn’t be happier. Luckily enough I got into it around 3 months back, before I saw 20% shelf price increases for similar bottles. Again, the Ultra High Net Worth Individual train keeps running into the station, and there is an aggressive interest in renown bottles as investments. Hence picking a few up before total lift-off is likely to be really valuable.

As always, a rising tide lifts all boats, so getting into the Japanese/Asian whisky game at all is likely to be valuable at the moment. Where the Yamazaki auction cemented the special bottlings of renown brands, this kind of auction prices puts more emphasis on smaller distilleries (mothballed or not) and leaves a broader interest for Japanese whiskies that most probably haven’t heard of. Hence this is likely to drive bottlings like Karuizawa, Mars, Matsui, Eigashima if you can find something good / special, or anything that has collection value.