凄い高い! Record Auction!

Whoa!

何で? What happened?

A bottle of Yamazaki 55 Year old (山崎55年) just went for auction, with the winning bid an eye-popping US$795,000 in Hong Kong (HK$6,200,000) this week! A mix of Mizunara Oak barrels and American White Oak barrels, distilled in 1960 at the Yamazaki distillery, it is one of the flagship bottlings from one of the most highly regarded and globally famous Japanese distilleries. For this particular one, it shows that the constricted bottling (100 only) could get through the lower proof and lack of single cask selection to truly shine at auction. It beat the expected gavel price by nearly 8 times! I’ve seen Crossroad Lab on Youtube [Japanese channel] talk about this in their Yamazaki feature a couple of months back, and the prices are of a different magnitude so someone really wanted that bottle. Or the box, that one is a treasure all on its own.

圧巻 Immediate Impact:

First, it shows the power of brand value. Second, an auction like this, much like any global awards show, will do a lot to put these whiskies on the map of collectors. This will further highlight Japanese whiskies overall, especially around the emerging Asia region and particularly the Suntory company bottlings.

余震 Secondary effects

So for me now is more about the secondary play. Will Yamazaki bottle expressions always command a premium? Yes. Is the end of the road reached? Probably not. But where there is likely to be a higher swing factor is outside of that brand. A Chichibu might not sell for those prices, but could have a higher percent increase if they also have a particularly good barrel oak. Which would you rather invest in? Yes, the Yamazaki will always have a resale value, but are you giving up potential earnings for that safety?

投資有価 Investment Management

This illustrates my idea of splitting up between core expressions and portfolio-building, and the satellite and venture plays around them. The bulk of my investment will be rather safe, but additional value can be picked up at a lower cost, with more bottles to spread my risk around, out on the satellites. Yes, picking up a bottle worth a starter property in Hong Kong might be almost equivalent from an investment perspective (less the mortgage aspect), but the real value lies in building a portfolio.

自己投資 Personal Investment

For me personally, this is a really interesting auction and makes it look like I came in at just the right time to this investing game! Enthusiasts abound, but this and other records likely to follow show that people are looking for areas to commit their cash to - or show that they have a lot of that cash, which is a flex that has a certain value in these times I guess - and that whisky is one of those areas that is now seriously starting to get looked into by the HNWI (high net worth individual) crowd.