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WORDSWILLIAM PARRY
TRAVELLER
AWEE DRAM
Avisit to the ’Burgh is the best place to kick off your whisky education
MALMAISON
Stay at Edinburgh’s scenically
situated five-star hotel and
relax with a large glass of fire
water. Make your selection
from an impressive menu of
more than 60 whiskies.
malmaison.com/hotels/
edinburgh
Whisky Max
THE SCOTCH WHISKY
EXPERIENCE
This museum offers a range
of whisky tours, tastings and
a well-stocked shop. It also
houses the Diageo Claive Vidiz
Collection of 3,384 rare bottles
of scotch,
shown left
.
scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk
THE BOW BAR
There aremore than 200
singlemalts to choose fro
this traditional Scottish pu
where the focus is on whis
including a featuredMalt o
the Moment.
80West Bow,
OldTown, Edinburgh; tel: +
(0)131 226 7667
EDINBURGH
How do you like your whisky? On the
rocks?With a splash of water? In the unlikely event
that your answer is “at £50,000 [€60,000] a bottle”,
then you’re in luck. Until the end of March, you can
submit your sealed bid for the only bottle of Zenith
(
whiskyshop.com/zenith
), a blend of Dalmore’s single
malts from 1926, 1951 and 1964. Coming fromone of
Scotland’s most renowned distilleries, it’s certainly a
mouth-watering prospect, but with 50 grand as the
starting bid (and word is that several bids already
well exceed that), you’ll have to
really
like your whisky.
Zenith’s valuationmay be extreme, but it’s in line
with a trend that saw prices for bottles of exceedingly
rare scotch break several records last year. One
bottle of Dalmore 62 year old sold at Singapore
airport’s duty free shop for £125,000 (€150,200).
This liquid gold isn’t just for drinking. Veteran
whisky-investment consultant and independent
valuer Andy Simpson (
whiskyhighland.co.uk
) sees
“investment-grade scotch” as smart speculation. In
2011, he bought and sold some 45 bottles of scotch,
which showed an average increase of 130% in a year.
According to Simpson, the top performing 250
bottles increased in value by over 50% in the last
quarter of 2011. “That was exceptional. I don’t think
the rises we’ve seen recently are sustainable,”he
concedes. “I see increases becoming more gradual.
But do I see the market crashing? No. Do I see scotch
as a viable, long-term investment? Yes.”
The word whisky, from the Scottish Gaelic
uisge
beatha
, means “water of life” and it is certainly that
to today’s otherwise lacklustre UK economy. Exports
of scotch in the first three quarters of 2011 reached
record levels of almost £3 (€3.6) billion – an increase
of 23% in the same period of 2010 – and this
demand is due primarily to the emerging wealth of
the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China),
where scotch is a status symbol.
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