Hi all and welcome to the first market report of 2022. With the market report we aim to give you a top level overview of what’s going on in auctions around the world, what bottles are hot, worth your attention and what ones you should probably avoid!

Auction stats Jan ’22

We had a total of 16 auctions that we observe complete in January totalling €17,526,548 across the industry. This converts the prices from the origin currency (mostly £) into € for consistency and all prices mentioned will be in €.

The average price of a lot across all sites was €344 with some of the higher averages per auction reaching €600+ and lower averages below €200 giving a good mix of client purchase power and auction reach.

Most Traded By Origin

Blantons dominated the American whiskey trading, with weller closing in as a close second. With the top 3 being brands from the Buffalo Trace distillery, it’s clear they have a good following, but it’s nice to see a relaunched brand in Michters coming in 4th and the legendary Wild Turkey holding its own in 5th.

Irish of course drops a bit in its total volume of trading, with Midleton topping the chart. Similar to the American interest, the top 3 of Irish trading comes from the one distillery, Midleton. Waterford made a big impact on the secondary market from the get go releasing many expressions all at once, which seem to still be going strong in trading volume.

Finally, Japanese whisky had a strong showing this month but a lot of the focus being on a couple of brands and then falling off quite rapidly. Hibiki was the 4rd most traded overall fighting off some tough competition for that spot.

Most Traded (individual expressions)

Of course, Macallan would dominate the top 5 traded clinching 3 of the top 5 throughout the month, and 5 out of the top 7, with some huge numbers on fairly new expressions in The Harmony Collection and A Night on Earth. Quite interesting to see such demand on the Edition No.1 too with 74 changing hands at such a high average price.

A good mix here, with some japanese, bourbon, irish and scotch sitting side by side. A lot of these were the 2021 edition of each release, which shows theres enough demand there that people dont get these at retail and need to pick them up at auction be that due to it being sold out or difficult to source for the buyers.

Biggest Movers

There were some big corrections being made this month, with a Midleton Very Rare 2003 falling from it’s amazing showing of €3,900 in Irish Whiskey Auctions to €1,302 in WVA Whisky Auctions. RedBreast 12 Cask Strength B1/15 was in for a tumble too, after averaging €415 in both Irish Whiskey Auctions and Whiskey Bidders in November, its dropped to €168 on Whisky Hammer. Suntory Royals Year of the Tiger expression also took a hit from its peak in December reaching €302, falling down to an average of €143 on Whisky Auctioneer and €218 on Irish Whiskey Auctions.

Dingle Founding Fathers Carry Out Killarney Pt2 took a dip too, reaching €310 avg when it first showed at auction in November, it’s not dropped to €225 average.

Bimber bourbon cask batch 2 took a turn for the better this month, raising from a €56 avg to €83 after stagnating since October. With Batch 3 recently released, its possible we will see this stay at the increase instead of dropping back down.

One of the more odd ones was a Teeling Single Pot Still Batch 3 selling for €105 when it sat at an average of €45 for the past year, and Batch 1 and 2 still selling around that price.

Jameson Caskmates – Devil Craft (Japan Release) showed its face again after last appearing in November with a lackluster performance of €135 down from the previous €190 avg. This time it showed its still in high demand, with maybe a few new collectors for the caskmates hitting a new peak of €325.

Ongoing Auctions

So that’s all from me on the auction report of January, if you have any suggestions or queries please feel free to reach out to me and I will get back to you as soon as possible. If you’d like to explore this data in more detail, and get the downlow on where you should buy or sell particular bottles, it’s all available when you signup to The Whiskey Companion. Until next time, checkout the auction calendar to find the ongoing auctions, with Irish Whiskey auctions, Scotch Whisky Auctions, WhiskyAuction.com and Whisky.Auction all live at the moment.