Luxury whiskies, what's the point?

@JoeVelo, I couldn't agree more. Mr. Hansell has a pretty good article on this subject, as well as some thoughtful replies from readers, on his blog. See the Sept. 21 entry:

www.whiskyadvocateblog.com

@JoeVelo I'm with you, too, except that I don't feel neglected or snubbed.

There's an '05 Dodge truck and a bare-bones '48 Willys jeep in our driveway. I still love to ogle the newest Bentley coupe without feeling as though I've personally been targeted as not being worthy. The truck and the jeep fit our lifestyle; the Bentley never would. And whoever would buy that Bentley likely couldn't grasp the freedom we feel in the jeep banging along on the Oregon Trail.

There's something for everyone, but there's nothing for all.

@JoeVelo I know how you feel, I feel it everytime I see a bottle over my price range which tends to sit at around $200 to $300 which is my high end. But to be honest there are so very many good affordable whiskies that I don't see much point in getting angry with the distillery. Every time I see the annual release of Port Ellen, etc and I dream and drool (just a little).

Maybe someday I'll be able to afford those bottles. Maybe not. Sometimes I'm lucky and I find a bar that'll be selling shots of them, usually for $50 or more. What I do then is decide how bad I'd like to try said whisky and then buy the shot. Got to try a shot of a very lovely Rosebank a few days ago due to that. Same thing several months back with a bottle of Ardbeg Lord of the Isles. Sometimes you get lucky, more often you don't.

Life is only worth living in my mind if you can dream about the better things in life! (btw I honestly don't feel that any whisky is worthwhile pricewise once you pass $500).

Yeah theres a point where I won't spend a dime on a fifth of anything and that's $200 it is low for some people when they buy whisky but I can't spend that much and sure its nice to eye a 30-50 year whisky but I wouldn't buy it unless I know I can spend that much and still pay the bills.

@Gotoak91 As I've said before oftentimes once you reach a certain price and honestly depending on your country, it sits right along that $150 to $200, you're not paying for how good the whisky is, your paying for how good other people think it is. There are SO many awesome whiskies to try and experience that sit at $75 to $200 AUS that the only time I spend more is when I KNOW I will love that bottle. Other then that it's experiment away!!

@SquidgyAsh Yes youre right and luckily most whiskies are under $200 USD at least the ones I want to try anyway. Especially with closed distilleries and older bottlings you are paying for what other people think and the fact that there's a small amount of bottles to go around.

It's harder here in Australia with whiskies such as the George T Stagg, Thomas H Handy, etc going for $300 AUS (WHEN you can find them) so I have to be honest I get so jealous of you guys in the states when I hear about $80 bottles of those bad boys. Same situation with single malts in Scotland.

But it could be worse! I could live in Canada and have to deal with THAT government system hahaha.

Ouch $300 for the Antique Selection (I believe that's the name). Brutal import taxes but then again the Pacific is quite a the distance not to mention if you wish to acquire a scotch.

@SquidgyAsh, "paying for how good other people think it is" is my impression as well. I think mere status also has much to do with it. Is the sort of person who would spend $156,000 on a bottle of Johnnie Walker Diamond Jubilee really concerned that the contents don't taste any better than a $180 bottle of Black Bull 30yo? No more so than the person who would buy an original Picasso would be concerned that a reproduction would look just as good hanging on his wall.

I might be a bit guilty of it at my level as well. Maybe once or twice in my life I'll shell out, say, $350 for a Brora or a Port Ellen, and I'll admit that there's a touch of "brag appeal" in it for me. The main difference is that in addition to the "Look what I have!" factor involved, I can be reasonably certain that I'll be getting some excellent whisky.

Just curious if any members of this forum have ever tried one of these super-luxury whiskies. If so, was the taste that much better than the best $100 bottles? Yes, I know price is determined by many factors other than taste. I also know that the taste of a whisky should be judged with a blind eye towards the price tag. But I'm still pragmatic (and poor) enough to expect $20,000 worth of taste from a $20,000 bottle.

Thank you everyone for the quick replies. Very interesting to have your point on this and that a lot of you share my 200$ limit.

@two-bit-cowboy that's a good comparison! right to the point.

Nicely said about our taxes here in Canada! @SquidgyAsh

@WhiskyBee I've had several whiskies that sat at roughly $1,000 AUS and I've got to be honest, they weren't $1000 worth of awesome. Were they good, hell yeah! But at $1000 my whisky can't just be good it has to do my bloody taxes for me. Even though $500 is the highest priced bottle in my collection (and for the record both my Rosebank and Port Ellen were gifts chosen by me when said someone said "choose!") I honestly think that at around $300 your value for whisky just drops.

Like a rock.

After that it's almost one of those "Oh My God I'm drinking "X" Whisky and there is DEFINITELY a brag factor in there.
Will I spend $50 or more on a shot of whisky sure, if it's the right whisky that I never thought I'd get a chance to try i.e. a Brora, Port Ellen, Rosebank, etc etc then sure! (Mind you I am insane ;)

Well-said, @SquidgyAsh. There's also the psychological factor involved. The blind tastings mentioned in this article are a good example:

tinyurl.com/8kppsgb

As stated in the article, a panel of "experts" gave an average score of 87 to a 30 yo Brora when tasted blind. Very good but not great, in other words. And this article deals with Broras and Port Ellens, which normally sell in the $300 - $500 (US) range. Imagine the psychological factor involved for bottles priced in the thousands.

A bottle of Mortlach 70yo by Gordon & MacPhail was sold here in Kiev today. The price was 129000 UAH which is a rough equivalent of 12500 EUR or 15500 USD.

I wonder what happy owner will do with it :) Drink this evening and throw a bottle out of a window? Keep it as a decoration? Treat it like an investment? Use it like image maker?

As anyone with a working brain would have thought there's a point where you are no longer drinking whisky but drinking prestige/status instead. As if it would pass those characteristics into your bloodstream.

I really enjoyed @SquidgyAsh last comment as it shows exactly this.

Interesting discussion...Chip Dykstra, over at The Rum Howler Blog, in both his review of the Highland Park 40 and the Appleton 50 year-old Rum broaches a theory that he terms 'Monumental Spirits', comparing such expressions to monumental architecture and anthropological theory on the trappings of nobility...you can read it here: therumhowlerblog.wordpress.com/whisky-revie… (the discussion continues into the comments, too)...

But, as @SquidgyAsh points out, "...you're not paying for how good the whisky is, your paying for how good other people think it is."

You only have to look at the Johnnie Walker Blue in order to evaluate luxury spirits. Most people think the Green or Gold expressions are as good if not better than the Blue. They are also one third the price as Blue. Most of this stuff is a marketing ploy. Just buy a copy of Whisky Advocate and read the reviews of expensive whiskies. You will find a quite a few in the mid 80s range. Are those truly worth hundreds or thousands of dollars? In my book they aren't.

Luxury whiskies are the same as any other luxury item. There are people who can afford to own them, so they buy them. It isn't that they need it. It's because they want it. Case in point. There is an auction taking place now for a Horace Wagner 1909 baseball card. Current bid is 1.6 million. It's a piece of cardboard with a picture on it. To those bidding it is something they don't need; but it sure is something they want.

I guess that goes for whisky as well.

@PeterG7 - do they really want it, or is that they have been made to think they want it? I think I'll have to amend @SquidgyAsh's original quote to read "...you're not paying for how good the whisky is, you're paying for how good other people tell you it is..." and as @DaveM and Chip Dykstra have noted, these really expensive (and old!) whiskies are sometimes not as good as their younger, more readily available, siblings.

@YakLord Interesting point you bring up. I'm not speaking from experience, but I'm thinking that if these people can afford to put down outrageous amounts of money on items like baseball cards or very expensive whisky its because they want it. I'm wondering if the person who paid 460K for a 64 year old Macallan bought it because of marketing. Somehow, I don't think so.

I have to tell you, if I had unlimited amounts of money I'd be doing the same thing. It's a pipedream, but it's fun to think that I could spend that kind of money on those crazy purchases

I can't help but think that if I had unlimited cash, I'd spend it on something other than a $150,000 bottle of whisky. For one thing, I'd be afraid to drink it! I'd feel like whatever the moment was, it wouldn't be up to it. I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

I have a dream, much like other whisky lovers, to drink something older than me. I'm 33 at the moment, so that's pretty doable. Highest on my list is the Glenfarclas 40 year. It's not available here, so I'll have to buy some next time I'm out of the country, but all in all it's a reasonable goal to have, I think. Plus it's a great whisky from everything I've heard -- expensive, but worth it.

I find that the more pricey something gets, the more the value drops. By this I mean that buying something twice as expensive as a cheap whisky might be twice as good or even better, but buying something twice as expensive as an already expensive whisky will probably only be marginally better -- if that.

I'd have to agree with @HeartlessNinny about a fear of the moment not living up to an expensive bottle. I started getting in to whisk(e)y 3 or 4 years ago and put down $200 dollars on a bottle of A.H. Hirsch 16 year. I knew at the time that my palate wasn't refined enough to truly appriciate it but from everything I had heard, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss the opportunity to enjoy it down the road when I would have a more refined taste for good whisky.

I still don't think I'm there yet and the longer I wait, the more the value increases and in turn the psychological games begin where I start to question a moment that will be worthy enough of cracking the gold foil.

@JoeVelo Great discussion, I see a good side of Luxury whiskies. My point is that people who spend that kind of money are not in the local shops that I use therefore I don't have to compete to get the brands that I want. I'm not able to lay out that kind of cash so I stay with regular brands. Regular brands for a regular guy like myself. :)

@Ingreatspirits I don't think there is anything wrong with buying a whisky and leaving it unopened to be enjoyed later. I have many unopened bottles. For me, the reason they are unopened is because they are so hard to find that I just don't want to open them. Some I paid a lot of money for, others not so much. At some point, I suppose, I will open them. When I do, I want to have friends around me that will enjoy them as much as I do.

There is one that I have that I don't think I'll open. It's a Glen Flagler 1973. I must confess I bought that for the historical aspect of having a very rare hard to find malt.

Most whiskies I purchase are in the $30 to $80 range (kinda rare I go over $65 per bottle)...To be honest I tend to like the more pronounced flavours of the youthful spirits over the smoother more subtle/complex older whiskies.

@FMichael Ah, see, that's exactly what I mean. Older and more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better, and even when it does, how much better are we talking about here? You like the taste of younger whisky. Nothing wrong with that -- not at all.

One of my favourite whiskies (and I'm sure not alone on this one) is the good ol' Laphroaig QC. How old is it, exactly? I was once told five years. As far as whisky goes, that's pretty young. But it tastes good, so I don't care.

Of course there are anomalies, like the Octomore -- it's young and expensive. But that's another discussion. :)

Dalmore is fake carmel colored/flavored crap and Macallan is overrated and lacks depth and complexity unless you go up to the 18 or higher. As for the marketing campaigns/photography/product placement/hype, I could not care a whit.

Dalmore is way overpriced. I would rather drink at $30 bottle of The MacTarnahan (9.5 YO Glenfarclas) than a $130 bottle of Cigar Malt or even pricier Constellation. In my opinion, Dalmore is for suckers who don't have discerning taste buds on their tongues and reach for their wallets at the prompts of gimmicks and trickery. If Dalmore put half as much attention to the making of a fine crafted product, the company wouldn't need to resort to silly gimmicks. I still don't understand why Ardbeg resorts to silly marketing gimmicks since Arbeg does make great whisky. I guess companies like Ardbeg feel threatened by other companies that make shitey whisky with bells and whistles to attract Pavlov's dogs.

I think to remember about older whiskies is that your purchasing a piece of history, your not buying a 40 year old whisky because it's the best bang for buck, your purchasing it to have an older whisky and more likely then not to share it with a group of close friends. Same thing with some of your higher end special whiskies, Port Ellens, etc The problem I think is actually a couple different parts.

First part of the problem with luxury whiskies is that most of the people buying them, DON'T research them. They're buying it because it's expensive and rare. It's a look at me kind of cry. I've managed to taste a couple of the lower end look at me bottles. They're good, but in no way is there any whisky that I've ever had or could believe that I'll ever have that's worth thousands of dollars.

The second part of the problem in my mind is the hype that goes along with a high end whisky. I've said it before and again and again. Once you pass roughly $200 to $400 AUS you're no longer paying for how good the whisky is, it's for how good other people think it is and how inflated it's reputation has become.

Third part of the problem is that the people these whiskies are marketed to are sadly not people with my sort of whisky budget. These are the kind of people who can shell out 2, 3, 4 thousand dollars on a whisky for sh!ts and giggles. I'm a whisky drinker who needs bang for buck. I don't have a problem shelling out several hundred dollars for a whisky, but I do heaps of research before that purchase ever comes close to happening.

Last part of the luxury whisky problem in my opinion and mind you I'm a cask strength fiend, is that almost all of them that I've seen sit at the lower abv scale of 40 to 46ish percent. I mean for 3 or 4 thousand dollars you'd at least think they'd give you cask strength!?!

You can always do an experiment. Purchase the bottle of expensive whisky you are interested in, say in the $300 US range. Take that bottle and compare it to three bottles in your collection in the $70 to $80 range. Does that more expensive bottle taste much better? Does it make you feel better in some esoteric way? If it doesn't, you have answered yourself as to whether you should pursue the luxury spirits or not.