How much is too much?

@Nozinan , I totally get what you're saying about sites like this encouraging my spending. I always limit my spending to whatever's in my whisky piggy bank, but the wish list is longer than it would be without such sites and it can be tempting to overspending on that long list. For example, I wouldn't be considering Amrut if not for recent Connosr chat from you and others.

If not for sites like this, I would probably spend SOMEWHAT less on whisky and get MUCH less satisfying purchases.

I suppose that if I were into whisky before the internet days, I'd just be cycling through whatever four bottles were on my local store's shelf and maybe subscribing to a magazine to wondering what Islay whisky was like. :)

@newreverie

My favourite rum is Flor de Caña! I tasted it first in Nicaragua. It's sold there at 35%, and at the LCBO at 40%.

I've only had the 5 and the 7. I have 12 year but never really have an opportunity to open it..

I would love to try a rum bottled closer to cask strength.

@Nozinan Not sure if you're familiar with it, but I got a single barrel 'New Grove' rum which was matured in Limousin oak, it's from Mauritius. Rum is not normally my thing, but bottled at 55% I can say this is the first run I've tasted that I found complex & interesting enough to buy a bottle of!

@newreverie

First of all...there's no such word as: "irregardless" :lol:

Secondly, it is important to set a budget that you can afford based on your circumstances, etc. For me, I tend to target sub-AUD$150 bottles (that is probably the equivalent of a £40, USD$70 or €60 bottle in comparison, such is the brutality of the Australian taxes and duties levied). If a bottle has a listed price in excess of AUD$150, it will take some convincing for me to proceed.

At the end of the day, it is most important to spend within your means, after all this is but a hobby and I believe there are for more important commitments in life.

Look out for "value-gems", remember that a $500 bottle does not necessarily taste 5 times better than a $100 bottle. So look around to see what suits your taste, a hobby does not have to be a financial burden and no one here will think less of you if you are satisfied with a Johnnie Walker Red. ;)

I try to do a good amount of research before spending hard earned money on whisky. Mainly on this site but others aswell. I keep an ongoing list of items I wish to purchase and try. My maximum limit is probably about 110€ for a bottle. Perhaps if I stumbled upon something extremely rare I could go a bit higher, as an investment if nothing else.

@Jules

Sadly such things are not available at the KGBO

I think it can be a slippery slope. Once you pay your highest you would pay for a bottle, the next time there is something that is special you want it’s easier to pay the new highest price you would pay for a bottle. I’m in that dilemma at the moment. I have an opportunity to purchase The Lost Prophet from the Orphan Barrel series. I was not interested in the first 3 but this recent release is getting good reviews and above all, I really want to taste a 22 year old bourbon or at least a super-aged, good-tasting bourbon. If I don’t purchase it I will never probably have the opportunity to do so. Is it worth it? To me it is. I saw it on the shelf and when I go back for it, if it’s still there I will get it. That’s my answer.

@maltygirl,

I thought about the Lost Prophet as well...but ultimately passed as it reeks of over-marketing. 40,000 bottles of "lost" spirits? Yeah, right. Reviews have been mixed, with some liking it and some finding it high on price and thin on flavor. The reality is there's nothing collectible or rare about it.

whiskyadvocate.com/whisky/2014/…

bourbonbanter.com/bourbon-whiskey-reviews/…

@broadwayblue Yes. I know it's not rare and I'm not looking to collect it, I'm looking to drink it. The main reason I'm interested in it is I want to experience an ultra-matured bourbon that tastes pretty good. I just don't get many opportunities to taste a 22 yr bourbon. Chuck Cowdery has a good write up as well. chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2014/11/…

@Nozinan One day when we get around to meeting each other, I have some rum that will blow your mind. Zacapa Limited Reserva (only 2000 bottles), and Zacapa 25 XO. The Guatemalans do it right.

@Nozinan The centario 21 is the only Flor de Cana I really enjoy. If you want to have some amazing rums that are readily available I recommend the following: Ron zacapa 23 solera, diplomatico reserva exclusiva, and plantation Barbados. These 3 bottles give you a great and dynamic rum collection for ~$100.

@mscottydunc I have both and can attest to their greatness. Zacapa knows how to make fantastic rum. There are only a handful of rums in my extensive collection I put in the same league, 3 of which I named above, and the rest are much more difficult to come by. Personally I put the 23 solera over the xo, I think the smoothness added by the additional cognac barrels wipes out some of the great spice depth of the 23. The LR does not have that problem.

I make all my purchase decisions irregardless of rarity.

@OlJas

Really? If you could buy only one bottle and there was a QC or Ardbeg there, or whatever your favourite whisky is, and a similarly priced one-off you'd never tried. The one you like will always be available but so,some is likely to grab the last rare one and you'll never see it again....you'd still buy your usual?

Not judging....just asking

These days paying too much for a bottle is something we are going to have to get used to ! once upon a time you could walk into any whisky/spirit shop and find something that was well priced. Today we can go and buy a simple bottle of Glenfiddich 12 and expect to pay around £30, not so long ago the Fiddich 12 was usually £20-£22.. has it improved in taste..no.. do we get more in the bottle...no... so its just a simple increase in cost. then take the other end of the spectrum, Glenfarclas 40 not so long ago was £280-£330 a bottle now you are looking at £450-£500, yes I know it was underpriced and is still worth the asking price but where has the increase come from.. do we pay for quality ? no not always..do we pay for the rareness .. again no not always, we just simply pay what we are asked to pay. some companys set the price simply on greed, some on what they think the whisky is worth and others on actual market value.. unfortunately whisky is classed as a comfort commodity so we can expect it to command a premium price tag. So your question on "how much is too much" is a hard one to answer due to the fact we all have different limits and different thoughts on quality...

Currently running in an election, the last thing I'm going to talk about is the high price of premium spirits, when most of the people who might vote for me are working low-paying jobs or are unemployed...

Basically, few people are going to rally behind a discretionary item like this. The industry will price itself out of business if they go too far. Meanwhile, those of us who don't see the value will get our enjoyment elsewhere.

The major chain liquor store in Texas called Spec's currently has Glenlivet 21 priced at over $300. I sincerely hope that this is a fluke as I often see it priced around $170 elsewhere. Strangely the 25 yr variety is priced at "only" $370 I'm seeing more and more "premium" scotch, bourbon, and other whisky/whiskey breaking the $200 barrier and often pushing past $300. How the market justifies that cost for a readily attainable product is outside of my comprehension.

@newreverie, probably not a fluke. Glenlivet 21 Archive just went up $ 100 recently here, from $ 135 to $ 235, pre-tax. It is a very nice whisky, but I am not chasing it at that price. If I had it offered to me at $ 150 again including the tax? Weeeelll, probably not, absent a larger whisky budget.

These price rises will not stop, the older matured stocks are running low, they have to do something to slow the sales enough to enable them to keep up with demand, I was talking to a well known distillery recently about a release, it was priced at double its previous level why ? Because they were struggling with the demand and the stocks were very low ..

@Victor I think you mean absent a larger whisky cabinet =D I have instituted a process where a bottle must be finished before a new one can take it's place. The good news is that I have quite a few reviews stacked up that I need to get posted.

@Nozinan, I just noticed your question from January about choosing (or not choosing) rare bottles over others that are likely to stick around.

The easy half of my answer is that if the rare bottle is uninteresting to me, then I don't give a rip that it's rare. Single casks--especially all the ones cranked out by IBs--really undercut the idea of "rare" in my mind. It's all rare, and yet there's tons of it when you view it as a whole. My local specialist shop has gobs on single cask bottles from C-level Speyside distilleries and whatnot. They're "rare" in the literal sense—the total bottle count from the cask is always stated right there on the label—but none of that makes them more attractive to me.

On this theme, Ralfy's old video comes to mind where he vats (I think) a Longrow, a Springbank, and a Hazelburn, making a single unique (truly) bottle. He rather facetiously describes the hordes of collectors who must surely be banging down his door to pay thousands of pounds for this one-of-a-kind rarity.

The trickier half of my answer applies when the rare bottle is one that I want, regardless of its rarity. In that case the rarity can increase the URGENCY with which I chase it, because I know my opportunities to get it are limited. So in your scenario with similarly priced bottles, I would buy the rare one.

A rare bottle priced AT A PREMIUM, though, must pass my usual test: Is this a better buy than my three staples, Knappogue Castle at $29, Ardbeg 10 at $45, or Laphroaig 10 CS at $60? I do value novelty, so plenty of bottles do pass that test, but that's the test.

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Peripheral thought: I think that many of the bottles often considered as "rare" are those that are created to be rare and branded as such. Again, the gobs of single casks from the indies always take the p$ss out of that idea.

It might tie all this stuff together if I note that I've never bought a one-off Ardbeg release, though the Ardbog sounded pretty good to me and I'd buy it if I found it today up to $80 or so.

@OlJas

You bring up an interesting point, and it makes me think of the AMRUT single casks that recently went at a reduced price. Yes they were single casks, but there were several casks each bottled as single casks. So at $127 I wasn't interested. At 75 dollars, assuming that each cask was similar... you bet I was interested, and I now own a few different "single cask" offereings.

A lot of what we're discussing in this thread is an exercise in defying the seller's power to assign value to something by setting the price.

"Oh, that bottle of Brora is $3000? Wow. It must be awesome."

Compare to: "Sure hubby, these designer jeans were $200, but they marked down from $500! I got a great deal!"

Prices are all made up. Sellers try to get the most they can for whatever they got to sell. They try a price and see what sticks.

It's hard to contrive sometimes, but the best method for making a purchasing decision is try something (say, taste a whisky or try on some jeans) in ignorance of the price—and also of the brand and all that if possible. Then decide how much you like it and how much you'd pay for it. THEN find out the price. If it's less than the value you assigned, buy it. If it's more, resist the auction effect where you think "well, it's only $15 more than I was originally willing to pay."

Two and an half instances in which I allowed rarity to affect my buying* decisions:

•Connemara Turf Mor. I thought this sounded absolutely intriguing when I first read about it on the Whisky Advocate blog years ago. It combined big peat (my favorite style), unusual flavors (yes, manure), and an Irish origin (where my heart and bloodline are, despite generally liking Scottish whiskies much more). Then I was disappointed to find that it wasn't being distributed in the U.S. When I visited Northern Ireland in 2014, I made this whiskey #1 to find as I perused the shops. I only found it in two places. In Coleraine, it as £90. No way. In Belfast, it was £78. At that price, I was on the fence. Then my traveling companion decided to buy it for me as a thank-you gift for taking her on the trip. Deliberately designed to be rare? Yes. Overpriced? Probably. But something I was intrinsically interested in, unable to get at home in the US, and appropriate for the occasion? Most definitely.

•PC7. I paid $100 for this a few years ago after being suitably pleased with the An Turas Mor and knowing that the PC7 got rave reviews and would soon become unobtainable. I haven't opened it yet, but last fall I was ready to pop it and clear the local shelves if it was as good as reputed. Sadly (?) the shelves were empty by the time that moment came, so it is practically unobtainable for me, at least by common means. I'll still open it alongside my saved-off samples of PC An Turas Mor and PC Scottish Barley, but probably not until I take home one more newer PC bottling to create a full set of comparison bottles.

•And the half: Talisker 57 North. This is still produced, reasonably priced, and plentiful—but not in the US. I previously passed on a 1L bottle of this in duty free for $150, but when I took my first spin on a mail order from Eurpoe this summer, I blind-bought two for ~$55/ea just because it'd probably be up my alley and it's "rare"—i.e., otherwise unobtainable locally—here in the US.

So yeah, I guess my philosophy is that I recognize rarity and the chance to overcome it for whiskies that I really want, but I still try to ignore it in my mental valuations.

*buying, or at least allowing to be given as a gift