Overview: Angus Kerr purchased a cask of Glenrothes single malt spirit in 1971 to fund his children’s school fees. The cask has matured for 57 years and is now recognized as the oldest surviving Glenrothes cask, valued at £270,000 by broker Mark Littler.
The Full Story
Angus Kerr, an 81-year-old from Surrey, England, acquired the cask while working in commodities trading in London. The original plan involved purchasing one cask annually for five years to sell the first in the sixth year at a profit. Shortly after the purchase, the selling company shut down and records disappeared. The whereabouts of the cask were only revealed when the distillery billed Kerr for storage fees.
Kerr made no move to sell for decades afterward, and only recently handed the cask over to whisky broker Mark Littler to dispose of. The seller had described it as a freshly filled cask, but it had already been maturing for about two years at the time of purchase. Kerr himself does not drink Scotch. When he does, he picks something under 18 pounds, or about 34,000 won.
Production & Profile
The cask remains the original sherry oak butt, and the spirit was filled on Jan. 2, 1969, giving it 57 years of maturation. Scotch whisky can be bottled only at 40% or above, and Kerr’s cask held at 42.2%. Bottled at cask strength, it would yield about 287 bottles.
Whisky critic Charles MacLean, who tasted it in June, said the flavor was not dominated by woody character. Casks that hold their commercial value over such long maturation are rare. Littler noted that a cask left for 57 years usually drops below 40% alcohol, at which point it can no longer be sold as Scotch whisky, or the oak completely overwhelms the spirit.
Brand & Industry History
The oldest official release from the Glenrothes distillery is The 51, a 51-year-old whisky issued in a limited run of 100 bottles in March last year. It was made by blending two casks and priced at 37,000 pounds a bottle, or about 69 million won. Whiskybase also holds no record of a Glenrothes older than 52 years.
What This Means
Cask trading itself falls outside regulation. The production, bottling and labeling of Scotch whisky are tightly regulated, but no framework oversees trading by the cask. The Scotch Whisky Association issued a guide for individual investors last year that spelled out the risks of falling values and difficulty reselling. In April last year, the parent company of cask investment firm Braeburn Whisky entered administration, leaving investors who held certificates without delivery orders as unsecured creditors.
On the 25th of this month, Cask Spirits Global was ordered into liquidation by the High Court in London following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. Of the 17 identified customers who had paid 97,249 pounds, only four had valid proof of ownership. Littler said the odds of winning the lottery are higher, adding that he had never seen a case in which a cask bought without paperwork from a company that went bust sat in a warehouse no one told the owner about and turned out to be the oldest one on the market.
Consumer Takeaway
Littler’s valuation is 270,000 pounds, or about 500 million won. That is not the price of a completed transaction but the estimate of the broker handling the sale. It is roughly 2,000 times the original outlay, but that face-value comparison excludes 55 years of storage fees and taxes due on a sale. Adjusted for inflation, 130 pounds in 1971 is worth about 2,400 pounds today, or about 4.48 million won, which works out to a 113-fold gain. Divided by the number of bottles, the valuation comes to about 940 pounds a bottle before tax and bottling costs.
Kerr plans to use the proceeds for his children and eight grandchildren.
Source: Read the original article
