In a stark demonstration of the power of branding, even well-established independent bottlers can only sell Macallan bottles at a fraction of the price of official distillery releases of the same age and distillation year.
Unless you own a Macallan cask, you won’t be able to relate to the following comparisons between distillery releases and independent bottler releases of Bruichladdich, Springbank, or any other distillery with a well-known brand. Customers are unlikely to pay the same for your bottle as they would for an official distillery release and probably less than their chosen independent bottler. This means you must be cautious about what values you’re aiming for when pricing your cask if you’re planning on bottling it.
Money allotted for advertising
The most successful whisky brands, including Macallan, Bruichladdich, Springbank, Dalmore, and even up-and-coming brands like Arran, invest heavily in advertising. The oldest distilleries have had time to cultivate brand recognition and customer loyalty, in some cases, for almost a century. Unlike distilleries, independent bottlers often operate on a much smaller scale, yet they nevertheless have significant budgets (sometimes in the thousands).
With Bruichladdich capable of producing 1.5 million liters of alcohol and Macallan 15 million (enough to fill over 30 million bottles), the companies can afford to spend so much on advertising. If you decide to bottle and sell your cask, you’ll need to promote your bottles and brand to move about 300 bottles from it. To top it all off, you’ll have to go up against well-funded competitors with a devoted customer base and name recognition, which will cut your bottom line.
Bottle wholesale vs. retail prices
It’s also important to remember that the prices shown on whisky websites are retail. If you don’t have a retail location to sell your bottles, you’ll have to offer them wholesale at a 40-50% discount.
This implies that if you find a distillery bottle selling for £100, you should immediately reduce your initial value to £40-50 and then reduce your starting price to reflect the lack of brand knowledge surrounding your bottles.
Pricing for bottling a barrel of wine
It’s also important to note that bottling a cask is only sometimes the most cost-effective approach to selling a keg.
You’ll need to buy bottles and labels and pay tax on the total purchase price before you can bottle your cask and sell the booze. As a result, the cost of bottling a barrel may increase by as much as 100 percent. To help you decide how much money you’ll need for your cask, we created a Cask Calculator.
This means that most private owners of barrels choose to sell their cask in bond rather than bottle it themselves. That whisky is yours to keep if you so want. Up to six bottles may be bottled for you to retain if you sell your cask via Mark Littler Ltd.