Today I bought a bottle of whisky for quite a good sum of money. A handsome sum, if I am being honest. The idea was to buy a bottle of whisky and sit on the thing for who knows how long, while the thing ratchets up some value. Speculation in other words.

It had always been something that I wanted to do, to invest a tidy sum in a bottle of whisky and then sell it later in the auctions, and maybe even make a good 15% profit on it. The idea hit me, when we were on a trip to Scotland and my brother-in-law had stopped off into a whisky shop in the town, he is a bit of an old hand at the buying and selling of whisky. If you do it right, you can make a good bit of money for yourself. If you get it wrong, then you are left with a massive loss, and the problem of whether it is wiser to settle for a smaller sum than initially paid out or just cut your losses and down the whole lot in one bitter night of drunken pointlessness.

That is what happened to one guy my brother-in-law knows. He went out and bought a special “limited edition” of whisky connected to a well-known TV show. It cost him £50 a bottle for the full set of nine bottles, on the premise that it would be a limited stock. However, the problem for him and others who bought the set is that the company that produced it decided that such was the popularity of the show, it made sense for them to just keep on making the sets, so despite the fact they called it a limited stock, it turned out not to be. Much to the dismay of those who thought they were onto a sure thing.

Lesson learned for me. Stay away from whiskies produced by that particular company. They are greedy pigs and like a bad drug dealer they will burn everyone, stiffing them with a lie or dodgy product just to make more money for themselves. They have no regard for the whisky market as a proper place of investment.

In whisky the important thing to remember is that the name of the producer is a big deal. A name is crucial, but then other factors are important in this thing. Another thing that is important is whether the particular whisky is genuinely a limited edition. That means that the distillery actually says, “this particular line of whisky only has x number of bottles,” and once they are all sold out, there will be no more following it.

That is a big deal. Just as the guy my brother-in-law knows found out to his cost. If a product does not have anything that clearly states that it is limited to a set number of bottles, it is not really limited, and if you buy them thinking you can make a profit on them, you will be mistaken.

The next thing that matters is if the bottles have been produced in a clearly recognised distillery. One that is a big name will always do better. Like all things in life a recognised and well-respected brand will always fetch a top price. Whether buying shoes and tracksuits or buying shares in the company itself. The same rings true for whisky. If you are going to invest, some names are just always going to be better than others.

Added to a big-name brand, and a genuinely limited selection, it is important that you invest in a whisky that has a good age to it. In other words, a bottle that has come from a cask where it has sat for anything more than 18 years will always do really well. Some under that will do well if they happen to come from a discontinued line in which a limited number of bottles remain because the rest have been drunk. But if you buy something that is less than 18 years old or without an age to it at all, then the investment might not be such a good one. Research is vital. Going with you little more than just your gut on this is not good enough.

When all these things coming together however, buying whisky as an investment can be a really good prospect. Again, research and understanding what makes a whisky valuable is important. It’s not like picking a horse because it has a funny name, or you think the jockey’s coat is in your lucky colour.

That being said, today, as I got into the van with my brother-in-law and drove through the who’s soaking that Storm Denis was bringing to Scotland, I was filled with the worst panic. After all there is a lot that could go wrong. What if we spend this money on the stuff and it completely bombs? There’s always that panic. What if someone says the whisky is rubbish and worthless and the idea, once expressed catches on and affects the value?

That is similar to something that happened during the great Tulip Bubble of the Dutch Golden Age when the prices of these flowers were enough to make or break a fortune, and people were spending stupid money on them, and then, suddenly out of nowhere, someone says that they were worthless. The idea caught hold, and like all great financial bubbles that came after this one, the very suggestion that something devalued the commodity, and the whole thing crashed around them.  Suddenly people’s fortunes were destroyed. The world seemed to turn upside down.

Of course, there is the flip side. Like all speculations and investments there is the problems and there are the gains. This could be something that gave you enough cash to really make a difference. A nice little safety net for those moments when things break in the car or home, or maybe you could be dumb and splash it around, a holiday here, a new car. Suddenly the possibilities are endless.

But no, get a grip, the gains on this most likely will be small, but worth it enough to go out and spend the kind of money that this bottle cost. I urged myself to keep it together. The excitement of being shrewd enough to put cash down on the ground floor and make the dividends is like a drug. It is similar to the rush gamblers get when betting in casinos and on horses. The rush of possibility versus loss. I could feel it affecting me. I needed to reign it in. 

It’s funny how your mind races ahead and tries to calculate what you will do if things go wrong. I mean, if you spend a good-sized wad of money in your pocket on something like this, and it fails to even wipe its face, what would you do? Thoughts of R--- went through my head and the massive gaff that he made. But then reason kicks in. From what M---, my brother-in-law had told me, this whisky was a banker.

Like the old analogy of a footballer getting a penalty, he steps to the ball, he has never missed a penalty, he has already scored three goals in the game, the goalkeeper is playing through a back spasm, the wind is behind him, oh, and the footballer is Brazilian. This whisky was that Brazilian. Everything about it was a cert to win. In fact, it had not even sold out yet and already an auction site had sold it for hundreds more than it was bought for, even though it was still being sold in the shop.

That’s what my brother-in-law said as he drove along the flooded and bumpy road from where he lived into -------. Both of us talking about the prospects of a good whisky, and he recalling the already shrewd investments that paid out for him, and the others that he was sitting on.

“You better get it on your house insurance,” he said knowingly. “The last thing you want is to splash the cash on this and lose all the money coz of a fire or a flood. I’d keep the receipt too.  If a car hits us, then we will be able to claim it on the insurance.” All this talk of crashing and insurance made me feel uneasy. Especially as we were aquaplaning on the roads whenever we hit a puddle of water.

But we made it, Storm Denis was not able to keep us from where we needed to get to. The van rolled through the streets and passed the shop, a proper whisky shop, not one of those places you find on the Royal Mile that sell whisky, but not the real deal. Sure, you can buy your Bowmore you Glenfiddich and your Macallan, but you will not get much more than the kind of drink you will get in any off-license worth two slaps. All very good for tourists, but just not the kind of place you go if you want to buy whiskies that will grow in value.

M--- was happy when he saw that the shop was empty but for the owner and one of his fellow employees. If the place was busy there was less chance to haggle a little on the price. We were after all buying a four of them. M--- had done his research on the drink. He kept telling me that it was a safe bet, guaranteed to grow in value, but it would be better if the shop would do it at a smaller fee. The fact nobody was in there would certainly help us out in getting a haggle on.

We prowled the streets around the shop, looking at the parking spots. It reminded me of a form of desperate curb crawling, two men in a van, driving slowly as we peered out the window, not at women as they stood around in that bored manner they have when they are on the game. But peering at the small signs that told us if and for how long we would be able to park there.

Loading bays sat there empty.

“We’re in a van,” I said as we passed the first one, literally twenty steps if not a foot away from the shop’s front door. “We could be doing delivery and loading. In fact, we are kind of doing that, aren’t we?” But M--- shook his head.

“Nah they’ll have you for it. Our van is two-toned, so it looks less like a work van. If I had my white one, we’d be alright. But the traffic wardens are absolute fascist gits here.” The van rolled on. I felt my heart sink. We’re gonna be parked miles off and have to do that rush walk in the rain, I thought gloomily. Instinctively I pulled my poncho out of the bag and started to slowly unravel it.

Around the bend we went, following the road up the hill and around the large town hall, grey granite with long streaks of black where the rain ran down the façade and around the large statue of William Wallace. Falling like a waterfall over the waterfall, over the front porch, and splattering on the floor. A pigeon scurried from under the shelter of the porch and flew across street in front of the van.

Finally, we found a spot to park in, we’d be able to go through an arcade, one of those old-fashioned arcades from olden days which were all the rage in town and cities and which now had become a little more than a relic, a shortcut through on wet days. As we rushed through it, I was reminded of the arcade that ran through the back of the GPO in Dublin.

In the shop we handed over the money, awkwardly we counted out the notes, counted out into hundreds and watched with the last useless sense of unease as I passed them over knowing that now there was nothing I could do about it. This was the moment when it all came down to something or nothing. A last push, the money went across the counter into the hands of J--- the store owner who, nodded when M--- had said those softly spoken secretive words. “Is there any chance of a knock-down since, you know?” The “you know” referenced the fact that he had bought a few bottles of this “sure thing” yesterday and was buying two more, and with me buying another one on top of that, surely there would be the chance of a knock down.

In this kind of thing there is no need finish one’s sentences. All meanings are implied. Nothing is said, but the nod and the wink means something, and everyone gets it.

“Oh aye,” he said, pausing a few seconds and then. “I could knock off say [a long pause ensued] oh, I dunno, £50 off each bottle.”

“That would be great, thanks,” said M--- “that would be brilliant, thanks,” he replied again trying not to sound too eager.

The deal was struck, we waited as they boxed the bottles up in the special wooden carriage cases, and then packed them into more boxes with foam protection to keep everything safe.

“You gotta not get them wet,” he said. “The least damage could knock so much off them.”

M--- started talking to him about other brands and investments that he had made. I stood listening, I could understand the principles of what they were talking about, after all, the principles were simple enough in any form of investment. Some of the names I did not understand. They spoke about it in the hushed tones, in one part they spoke as investors, and then in another part as connoisseurs.

 I waited, listening to the whole thing, taking in the information that they were speaking off. At times like this, when you are taking your initial punt in the world of big whisky, or big finance, or anything for that matter, it is best to keep your trap shut and listen to the people who actually know what they are on about. That’s the way you get to learn about things. Not walking in and running your mouth off like some kind of big-shot know-nothing that you just come across like a right fool, and they all get it that you have no idea what you are doing.

I kept thinking that.

For goodness sake, just don’t let them know that you have no idea at all what you are doing. That was all I could think about. Not looking like some kind of idiot. Especially if you are going to put a load of money into something. Just listen to the advice, just listen to what they know and try and take it in. If you can, then you will understand. You will learn, and then when you come down to it, you will get there. You will be able to buy more. Invest, invest.

No, steady on, the guy is looking at you, listen, stop thinking. You are smiling. You look like an idiot. I couldn’t keep it together. The giddy effects of putting so much money into a bottle of whisky for one thing, I had never spent more than £30 on a bottle of whisky before. And here, the guy just cut more than that off the price of this one. I looked at M--- and nodded trying to act like it was nothing. Trying to look like I agreed with something he had said, something about the bottle with the final number in this selection being the dregs and not worth as much as the other numbers.

I had been there when one of the guys in the shop had said that to him the day before, and he had nodded as I was nodding and you could see that he was wondering if that was true but also thinking that it made a whole bunch of sense to him that it would be true.

But now as he was saying it to the guy who owned the shop, and the guy who owned the shop had visibly scoffed at the idea, M--- had quickly began to rethink the whole philosophy.

“Of that isn’t true. You dinna think they are gointae just tip the barrel up and scrape out the last drop?”

M--- shook his head.

“Besides, the bottles are numbered after they are filled, they have no way of knowing if the bottle marked number one is the dregs or the last bottle. In fact, I bought the last one myself.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. You dinna want to believe that kind of rubbish man.”

M--- nodded and started to say how that made sense, of course it made sense. This distillery was not some Mickey Mouse organisation. It wasn’t Aldi or Lidl whisky, where they didn’t care one bit about the content of the bottle and whether it tasted good. They just wanted a cheap drink that some filthy cheap drunk would buy and hope that it was strong enough to get them wasted.

“Aye, sure, d’ya see this seal around the cap here,” he put the tip of his pen in the vicinity of the seal while not touching it. “This thing costs a fortune to have printed on paper that matches the dimensions and then the name alone on it, means that it comes with a sort of guarantee that whatever is in this bottle is going to be damn good. If they put bits of old oak casket floating, and other gunk they would do more damage than anything. Because some people will drink this and if they put a bad tasting whisky in just one bottle it could wipe out the value of this selection altogether.”

Wait, I had to replay that bit in my head. Someone would actually drink this?

“Would people actually drink this?”

“Oh aye, you’ll get people who will drink this. There are a lot of rich people who drink whisky for the act of it. Whisky is such a good thing like that. You can buy this bottle to invest in it, or you can buy it to drink it, and know that because it is made at this distillery and comes at such a high price, that you will be getting a very good dram from it. Before they bottled it, they did a tasting, and everyone who drank it said that it was very, very good. It is quite a good whisky.”

I looked at the few remaining ones on the shelf, at the dark golden colour of the liquid, the exquisite bottles, the sharp lines and glazed details and I thought he was right. Some whiskies look as bad as they tasted. This was some decent aged whisky. I wished I had the money to buy a bottle and drink it and not even bat an eyelid at the idea of it. Just as I started querying what kind of nutter would do that, would actually go in there and buy a bottle of this stuff just to drink it, he began to tell us of some famous pundit for a sport channel who had come into the shop and bought a few bottles. He was going to invest some, but one was for drinking, and he would sit with a dram and a cigar and feel very good about life that getting paid to talk about the sport he loved would pay him enough to be able to enjoy things like that with no money worries to hold him back.

The last few seconds of the transaction passed in a whirr after that. I had asked about a distillery that I had heard about opening and had wanted to help it as it was a Gaelic region, and I really wanted to try out their product, but apart from gin there was nothing else of theirs around. Not even an unaged whisky.

“They’ve been waiting for a three-year-old bottle to be ready, but that won’t go out just yet, they’ll do a three, a nine, a twelve and then on, but it will take a while before that stuff hits the market. Another new distillery released their three-year-old last month, but they are charging £90 a bottle for that. Now I don’t mind paying for a bottle to drink, but £90 for a three-year-old is just ridiculous. Especially since it is only a new label too. But that’s the thing about whisky, you, see? It is such a prized commodity all over the world.

The payment was made, done, the deal over. I cannot remember what happened after, what point the conversation came to an end, but after we gave them our details so they could contact us when they had something new coming in, we said goodbye walked out of the door.

I looked around and worried. Suddenly every person became an enemy. A possible thief. I was glad as anything that the whisky was in non-descript bags and boxes, and with my poncho on I looked a little like some kind of weirdo. M--- had gone to get the van. He had suggested I wait so that the boxes were not out in the heavy rain as long. Just in case some of it got through the elaborate defences to keep the rain out. The boxes get stained, and that’s it. They’ll lose value.

I felt myself clench with panic. There were so many things that could go wrong, that could knock the price down and make the whole thing pointless. You can only try and eliminate the risks as best you can. Keep them dry, don’t walk ten minutes up the road to get into a van, when the van can come to you. That made sense.

But then there were the people too. All around me were people who looked like they would rob you for kicks. Nothing would stop them from just coming and grabbing the bottles, and they’d probably be so dumb as to just go and drink the whole thing and not think that they were guzzling thousands of pounds of liquid cold. You couldn’t trust them. I felt like I was wearing a suit with diamond pinstripes in it. Their eyes fixed on me worried me. Suddenly a large group of people speaking in German, or Czech, came towards me. I already looked like a weirdo, I decided to act it to.

As they got closer, I began talking to myself, in hurried demented ferocity, laughing out loud, and gesturing to some invisible friend. It worked, they and a few others walked around me, avoided looking at me, and kept away. I thought, damn it, if I was going to not make myself look like a person with thousands of pounds worth of whisky in my hands, I was going to have to go big. I really had to make it look like I was crazy, or at least what they thought was crazy. I walked slightly towards them, appearing oblivious of their existence.

The hurried away from me, other people crossed the street. The job was done, suddenly I saw the van coming down the street, and I scurried up the pavement, trying to stay under the shelter of the building and shop porches. A man stood in one doorway sucking on a vape, the thick anise smelling steam whirled around in the wet air. He paid no attention to me.

Once in the van, I belted up and sighed. That was it, the worst over, now for the drive through flooded roads back out to the village where we were based. The excited talk in the van was brilliant. M--- told me all about the prospects, the highs and lows of what goes on when you invest in whisky, buying and selling, buy and sell. Money rolls in and it can fade too. For some that is the buzz, the bit that makes it like gambling. Putting money on something and seeing if it will pay big. For others it is a cold business decision, of putting faith in the business model, and it is paying dividends in the end.

When I got back to the place where we were staying, I stuck the box in a safe place, kept it wrapped up as the guy in the shop had given it to me. Maybe I should take the paper from it, he had put it there to keep the bottle from rubbing the back of the box, but I will wait until I get back to my house and I will embed that thing in some place safe, kept well out of reach of everything, ready for when the time is right to put it into auction. I am excited and hopeful because as I have said, every auction it has gone into, has made a decent gain. I will write back again about the results of this little foray into the world of Scotch at that time. I hope it will work out well, but for now, the very act of buying it with all the panic and worry, as well as the unmitigated excitement of what could happen if it goes right has been one hell of a trip. I think I need a drink to keep my nerves from going haywire. Anyone fancy a whisky? It’ll be cheap though. I promise you that. 

Words and picture © Vincent S. Coster 2026