Brora in Australia

Unlikely that you'd find any here. But importing from the UK works. The prices aren't so bad when you take the VAT off, almost pays for the shipping to Oz.

You'd be hard pressed to find it on sale in a shop here. If you did it would almost certainly be at an insane price. Best to just inport it from whiskyexchange or another online store. On a side note Australian customs always seems to be on a lunch break when my orders come though because I haven't been charged Australian inport tax for any of them.

@Jason0142 You're lucky.. I got slugged customs on my Port Ellen 30yo of all things. It wasn't pretty.

@systemdown & Jason0142 - Thanks for the advice! Looks like I'll be ordering online - hopefully I'll have the same experience as Jason0142 :-). systemdown - what was the tax damage on your Port Ellen? Did you get the GST charged or more? :-(

When you inport whisky to australia you get hit by gst plus a specific alcohol tax that is somewhere between 30%-50% of the price. It sucks really hard when that happens but for me I've only been taxed once on a bottle of gin. When importing you always have to make sure your ready to pay the tax if it hits you.

@systemdown, can you remember what the tax bill on your Port Ellen 30yo was? I can imagine it been pretty horrible.

@GlenS @Jason0142 So the calculation is as follows according to my customs invoice (as at May 2012):

Total payable is Dutiable value + GST on subtotal where:

Duty Payable = [($whiskyvalue * 0.05) + ($74.72 * %ethanollitres)]

and

GST = GST on Duty + S&H component for that item (allocated by % value of item in shipment).

e.g. Old Pulteney 12 yo @ 40% ABV as part of my shipment with Port Ellen:

DUTY = [($40*0.05) + ($74.72 * 0.28)] = $22.92 TOTAL = (DUTY + (GST on DUTY+S&H)) = ($22.92 + ($22.92+$3.57)/10) = $29.57

For the PE you can do the math on a GBP 300 bottle with 50-55% ABV with AU $35 allotted shipping & handling component!

Pro Tip: Valuable bottle + cask strength = OUCH. It's a gamble. I've had another shipment come through without duty. Make sure you leave a note (if it's not TWE) to NOT label the package contents as "collectible bottle" (with an insanely tiny nominated value, when it's a fairly decent sized box with 2 full bottles of whisky + several samples in the carton. Shipping fail. No wonder I got slugged - if they'd have applied some reasonable values and not tried to pass it off as "collectible bottle" perhaps it would've gone through without drawing any undue attention).

@systemdown - That's aweful - hopefully you'll have better luck next time! On the topic of Brora, I have found a sneaky little place that does sell Brora in Australia. They have the 1982 / 2010 G&M bottling of the Brora 28 year old (at 40%). It's AUD$200.00 so I'm torn..... thoughts?

@GlenS One of the things that Customs has told me is that expect a flat $75 a litre of alcohol, then on top of that 5% of the value on the bottle.

Sounds awful. But realistically I'm able to import most of my whiskies into the country cheaper then what I can pay for it in Australia.

Just don't order any entry level or readily accessible bottles because even though it's cheaper it's REALLY not cost effective

Personally when I hunt for lost distilleries I won't purchase anything less then cask strength i.e +50%abv. I find too many crap barrels being released and then watered down /crossing fingers that higher strength will wind up resulting in better bottles.

Just a personal preference though.

Thanks guys - great information as always! I think I'll give the G&M 28 year old Brora a miss - seems like an underperforming version from what I've read :-)

Btw to close this thread - it looks like expressions from the Brora distillery are very difficult to source in Australia (suprise suprise). There is a specialty scotch store in Australia called "World of Whisky" which as of today's date has the Brora 30 year old (2009 OB at 53.2%) and the G&M 28 year old IB at 43%. As Jason0142, SquidgyAsh and systemdown mention you also have the option of buying online and having it shipped to Australia - just be aware of the tax implications in doing this which are neatly summarised by the guys below. Cheers :-)

Might be worth getting in touch with Graham at The Odd Whisky Coy (theoddwhiskycoy.com.au) and speaking to him about ordering in Brora - he's got some really interesting stuff, and may well be able to arrange some in a future shipment.

Oh... I forgot, he's on Connosr as well - @GrahamWright !