Subtitles section Play video
-
- [Ju] This whisky costs $30,000.
-
It's a single malt.
-
Single malt whisky is one of the most
-
revered spirits in the world.
-
It's exclusively made from barley,
-
which is quite a cheap product.
-
So how does one bottle get to be so expensive?
-
Over the past 50 years, single malts
-
have become increasingly popular.
-
Scottish single malt exports grew by 14.2% in 2017,
-
to just over $1.5 billion.
-
One of the main players in the single malt market
-
is Glenfiddich, whose parent company
-
achieved a 1.2 billion pound turnover last year.
-
- [Ian] We are selling 1.2 million 9-liter cases
-
of Glennfiddich around the world.
-
We have 180 markets around the world
-
that we generally service.
-
In 1963, we started to commercially sell
-
single malt, but also to promote it actively
-
outside of Scotland.
-
But we gave the single malt category
-
the biggest push it's ever had in its life.
-
- [Ju] We were fortunate enough
-
to try a 12-year-old bottle, worth $36,
-
and a 50-year-old vintage, worth $30,000.
-
- [Ju] The 12-year-old whisky was certainly
-
sweet and pleasant to drink,
-
but I was expecting the more expensive bottle
-
to taste out of this world to justify its price.
-
- [Ju] Wow, really distinct.
-
- [Ian] You can taste much more European oak in this one.
-
- [Ju] Yeah, the distinction between the flavors
-
I think is a lot smoother and lot oakier.
-
There seems to be truth that the longer the alcohol
-
is in there, the smoother it tastes,
-
so the more deserving of the expensive price.
-
But that can't be the only thing
-
that justifies one bottle being
-
close to $29,000 more than another.
-
Another reason is that making single malt
-
is an extremely difficult process to get right.
-
Barley is ground down and added to spring water.
-
Heated to 64 degrees Celsius, it turns to sugar,
-
dissolving into a fine sweet, tangy liquid called wort.
-
The wort is drained, cooled, and passed into washbacks.
-
This is heated and condensed in copper wash stills
-
for its first distillation,
-
and a second time in spirit stills.
-
The spirit trickles into the spirit safe,
-
ready for maturation,
-
and then it's batched in casks with spring water.
-
Casks spend years in the warehouse
-
maturing into a single malt.
-
- [Ian] So the secret to the quality
-
of single malt is consistency.
-
You've got to nail down your production
-
so that your unique spirit comes off exactly the same,
-
and you have a spirit quality team that are
-
actively looking at [that], and we also nose
-
the unique spirit on-site as well.
-
- [Ju] But there's more.
-
An age 30 maturation can have 30% to 40%
-
of the alcohol evaporated in the barrel,
-
or 1% each year of the whisky's life.
-
This is because of something called 'angel's share,'
-
the natural evaporation of the liquid
-
into the atmosphere over time.
-
So older whiskies are expensive
-
not just because they're old
-
but because there's less of them left.
-
There's one more factor we haven't
-
touched upon yet: status.
-
- [Ian] It's all about the equity of the brand
-
and the perception of the consumer
-
about how much they're prepared to pay for our brands.
-
I think, in general, younger people want quality.
-
They want good shoes, good clothes,
-
nice cars, nice houses, and they want
-
to be drinking single malt.
-
- [Ju] And it's not just store-bought bottles.
-
One factor that's driving up the price
-
of single malts is a booming collector's market.
-
A bottle of the Macallan 1926 60-year-old
-
recently sold for $1.5 million in auction,
-
marking the largest single sale ever for a bottle.
-
Christie's international director of wine,
-
Tim Tiptree, oversaw the sale.
-
- It was one of 40 bottles produced from a single cask
-
that was distilled in 1926 and then bottled in 1986.
-
It was a hand-painted bottle,
-
so I think it does add a little to the desirability,
-
but it's the intrinsic quality of the whisky
-
inside the bottle that is driving the demand.
-
- [Ju] But scotch has some serious competitors.
-
Alongside China, India, Taiwan,
-
Ireland, Japan is one of the world's
-
major producers of unblended whiskies.
-
- "For relaxing times, make it Suntory time."
-
- [Ju] You might have heard of 'Suntory time.'
-
Suntory own the Yamazaki Distillery in Osaka Prefecture.
-
The rarity of their produce drove prices sky high.
-
- The Japanese have come to the fore,
-
about four or five years ago, one of their whiskies
-
a Yamazaki was named the best whisky in the world,
-
and that created a lot of noise
-
around the Yamazaki single malt.
-
But Yamazaki's owned by Suntory,
-
and the bulk of what they produce goes to blends,
-
so they had insufficient whisky in their warehouses
-
to actually continue on the success of what
-
Yamazaki achieved in that one year.
-
What dictates the price, the value of a whisky sometimes
-
is the exclusivity, so the less there was,
-
it drove the price up to the point
-
where Yamazaki was being sold off at three,
-
four times the normal value.
-
- [Ju] But blended whiskies can
-
also reach quite a high price.
-
Will they ever be as expensive as single malt?
-
- We don't normally sell much blended whisky
-
in our auctions, single malts are much more rare,
-
they are much more individualistic so,
-
whereas blended whisky is typically,
-
generally more produced in larger volumes
-
and also is more homogenous in the actual
-
style and taste profile.