I am often asked by my customers where they can buy full whisky casks as an investment or to drink themselves. Certainly, you can buy casks from reputable distilleries that don't want to cheat you like dubious investment firms.
However, there are a lot of hidden costs that are not apparent at first glance. When buying a cask, you should be clear about a few things in the final analysis:
- Whisky in casks is not subject to any increase in value! Whisky has daily prices that have been under great cost pressure for a long time. The distillery death that has been going on for many decades is the clearest proof of this. Whole casks are only sold on to the blend producers by brokers. You as a private individual have no access to this market.
- A litre of raw whisky (malt) costs one to one and a half British pounds (1.30 euros to 2 euros) to produce. A Hogshead cask (250 litres) is thus worth 325 to 500 euros (without profit). The storage and insurance costs per litre of whisky are 10 cents per year. The rest of your purchase price goes as profit to the distillery and the retailer.
- If you import the contents of a hogshead into Germany, there is 13.03 euros in excise duty per litre of pure alcohol, which must be paid immediately. With about 150 litres of pure alcohol in a Hogshead, you can expect to pay 2,000 euros in tax!!! Added to this is VAT, which is currently 19% of the cask purchase price + excise duty. This means that VAT will burden you with an additional 600 euros. You should be prepared for this.
The following calculation gives you a summary of the costs involved. Please note that this is only an 'Inetwa' calculation. You should compare it with the offers you have received.
| Calculation | EURO |
| Production | 500,00 |
| Profit (distillery+dealer) | 750,00 |
| Interest for 10 years (6% p.a.) | 750,00 |
| Excise duty (customs) | 2.250,00 |
| Value added tax | 600,00 |
| Filling costs *) | 1.250,00 |
| Freight costs *) | 1.500,00 |
| Total costs | 7.500,00 |
| Cost per bottle (500Fl.) | 15,00 |
*) estimated
What is added is the fact that you fill about 500 bottles from a single barrel. These bottles cannot be sold on a large scale. It should be noted that Whisky.de often receives offers from private individuals who try to sell their whisky in this way. Unfortunately, we cannot accept these bottles, as we do not have any buyers for them either.
So there is nothing left for you to do but give away all the bottles, sell them at cost price, put on a lot of 'rum pot' or drink from the bottles yourself until the end of your days.
For this reason, Whisky.de does not offer whole casks for sale.
