Single Malt Scotch in America: Prices Begin to Stabilize

Welcome to Part 2 of 2019's Scotch Stats! We're in America now, so things are going to get huge.

First off, there's The Spreadsheet or The Price List or The Sleep Deprivation. There are now 225 whiskies on the sheet. And there are at least 225 stories to be found within it. Today I will spare you, and tell only a few tales, including the one in the post's title.

Here's where The Spreadsheet's numbers come from:
I use Wine Searcher's Average Wine Price system, selecting only US retailers. Their site has an explanation behind how they arrive at their averages. To summarize, their averages don't include auctions; all prices are adjusted to 750mL bottles; the highest and lowest 20% prices are removed in order to correct for pricing errors and grievous retailer choices. Aside from the ability to view pricing history, Wine Searcher's big draw (for data and consumer purposes) is their large data set. For instance, if you search for Johnnie Walker Black Label or Talisker 10 they'll actually stop their listings at 500 because they have so many retailers in their system. Please note, this is not an advertisement for Wine Searcher. Their Average Wine Price history requires a paid subscription and I've been known to mooch off of other people's accounts from time to time.

My spreadsheet has gotten so extensive that I encourage you to check out my shared Google Doc at this link. It should be easer to follow and scroll through than it is here.



About the spreadsheet:
I'm using a methodology similar to the last time around. There are 225 whiskies (99% of which are official bottlings) listed in total and, thanks to spreadsheets, I have data back to 2007 for 115 of them. Each time I assemble one of these annual posts I include more whiskies. This year I added only those that had at least three years of US pricing history. Whiskies with ten or fewer retailer listings were retired in 2019, but were kept on the list for historic pricing purposes. They received a blank gray field for their efforts. Whiskies with fewer than 20 listings are marked "scarce" in the notes column. Don't be too surprised if all the "scarce" whiskies are retired next year, like the entire old Benriach range was this year.

Because directly comparing a 12-year price change percentage with a 3-year price change percentage with an 8-year price change percentage is crap math, I'm using the same metric as I did during previous years to measure the increases: Multiple of Inflation (or MOI).  MOI takes the total price change and divides it by the US's inflation (CPI) rate over the related period of time (12, 8, 6 or 3 years).

The color-coding is based on the MOI, as follows:
Dark blue = price actually decreased, thus a negative MOI
Light blue = price increased between 0 and the actual rate of inflation
Green = price increased between 1 and 2 times the rate of inflation
Light pink = price increased between 2 and 5 times the rate of inflation
Fire Truck Red = price increased between 5 and 10 times the rate of inflation
Black = price increased more than 10 times the rate of inflation

Unlike last year, I'm ditching the MOI in my charts because I'm approaching the information from a different angle this year. Weighted calculations were laboriously factored into my formulas to correct for the different time spans involved in the averages.

If this is your first time seeing The Spreadsheet, I encourage you to pour yourself something delicious and then click over to the spreadsheet and dig in.

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Now, for some pictures to go with the words.

THE STORIES!

The Rise and Pause of the NAS

Here's the headcount of the whiskies from the spreadsheet:

Yes, those tall black bars are NAS single malts. It is now the largest age category. The infection has set in. Nearly every official range has at least one single malt without an age statement. Some brands have multiple NASes. Some are made entirely of NAS whisky. And the prices?

There's a lot going on in this chart, especially the right side of it. But look over at the left side. The average price of the 52 NASes is higher than than the average 8-10 year old whisky, higher than the average 11-13 year old whisky. Let that soak in a bit...

...

...Okay, that's enough time, because something interesting has happened to the NAS category:

On the surface, it appears as if the average price has barely moved over the past three years. But within these numbers is another story.

Out 52 NAS whiskies, 21 dropped in price between 2016 and 2019, while another 15 rose in price less than 5% during that time. Leaving out the two Dalmore NASes, this category actually averaged a drop of more than half a percent over the past three years.

You'll see more low or negative numbers for NASes further down this post. I think we will need at least one more year of data before it can be determined if the category is truly trending down in price. But it's fair to say that it has at least plateaued, and that plateau is only being held up by a few pricier outliers.

Luxury is expensive

Yes, this chart again:

Those tall bars on the right get taller and the bars on the left get smaller every year. The prices for 25-40 year old whisky are rising at such a fast rate that they screw with my line graphs.

Like so:

Or this:

40 year old whisky has become irrelevant. A $5,000 whisky is superfluous for 99.9% of the whisky drinking public. 99.9% of us are ignored in its production, release and marketing. It wasn't always like this, but it's come to this because 40 year old whisky's price increases have been operating on a different plane than all other single malts.

Speaking of which.

EDRINGTON DRUGS

I guess the Internet Way to write about this is to toss up a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and say "Macallan gonna macallan".

And that is valid. But I'ma write a little more about Edrington.

As I noted in reviews last year, Macallan's and Highland Park's branding has recently devolved into unfocused, confusing gibberish. But that hasn't stopped them from hoisting up their prices every time a marketing exec creates a different range, names it after something he just saw outside the window, then hoovers a line.

The "Average" in this table is the per year per whisky per owner. Yes, The Egregious Group is on a whole 'nother level.

The Main Story

But you didn't come here to read all that. Or did you???

Different charts tell different stories, and all can be true. There's a chart like this...

...which shows little steadying or plateaus other than with the NAS category (as mentioned earlier) and some straightening out with the younger categories.

All the percentages in this chart are compounding. A whisky whose price goes up 3% each year for 12 years won't be $136 at the end, but rather $142.58. It's not lies, nor damned lies. It's statistics. And it's why money market accounts used to be hella lazy awesome during different economic times.

But if I take the overall increase for each of the 225 whiskies, then split out the average annual increase for each available year compared to its first year on the spreadsheet (2007, 2011, 2013 or 2016), and then create a weighted average of all of it, I hopefully get a chart like this:

See things starting to even off now?

Prices are still going up, so why does this chart do the flattening thing? It's because price increases have been easing off, bringing the averages down. Thus the lines aren't heading towards the stratosphere (sorry Edrington). Some may even be slanting slightly down. Most are just pointing rightwards.

Here's a chart that shows the average ACTUAL year-to-year increases.

click to embiggen

The magic year is 2016, peak craziness. It is at that point, for the vast majority of whiskies in the spreadsheet, that a calming of price increases began. By 2019 most whiskies, and half the categories, were increasing by a rate lower than inflation.

This doesn't mean the prices are going down, except with the NAS category. It means the line is starting to flatten out, as shown in the previous chart. The 8-10, 11-13 and NAS categories' prices essentially did flatten out between Jan 2018 and Jan 2019. One wonders if 14-16 will follow suit by next year.

Of all companies, Diageo (yes, Diageo) has shown the most promise. They're the largest owner, and have the most whiskies on the spreadsheet. Their entire portfolio's average price has gone down 1% since 2016.

So......what's the cause? I don't know. As mentioned in Monday's post, single malt exports to the US are certainly not hurting (which also leads me to believe that prices are not going to drop soon). Are corporate executives — at companies other than Edrington — beginning to sober up and drift towards reason, easing off the acceleration? Could this be a reaction to the pricing of American whisky? Is the overproduction from the past decade about to come home to roost? Or is there something else on the horizon?

It's possible we're at the beginning of a new era of the Scotch business. It's also possible there are many years of more-of-the-same ahead. Either way, I'd be happy to see the end of the price hikes. Now can someone tell the independent bottlers about this?

Scotch Market in Flux, Part 3: Single Malt Prices in the USA

If you've made it this far, I hope you don't think I'm going to tell you that whisky prices are declining. But thank you for clicking over to Part 3 of my Annual Scotch Whisky Report anyway! (Part 1 is here and Part 2 is there.)

The price list has grown longer and wider this year. So though there are words above and below the spreadsheet, I know you're here for the spreadsheet.

As I write every year, here's some background on the data below:
I am using Wine Searcher's Average Wine Price system, selecting only US retailers.  Their site has an explanation behind how they arrive at averages.  To summarize, they do not include auctions; all prices are adjusted to 750mL bottles; they remove the highest and lowest 20% prices in order to correct for pricing errors or egregious retailer choices.  Aside from the ability to scroll through pricing history, Wine Searcher's big draw for data purposes is their retailer count.  For instance, if you search for Johnnie Walker Black Label they'll actually stop their listings at 500 retailers.  Their system has over 350 450 500 retailers selling Talisker 10 (extra love to the folks still selling it at $49.99).  So Wine Searcher is pulling from a very large data set.  And, anecdotally, their site has proven very reliable and accurate in my searches for beers, wines, whiskies, brandies, etc.  But please note, this is not an advertisement for Wine Searcher.  Their Average Wine Price history requires a paid subscription and I've been known to mooch off of other people's accounts from time to time.

I encourage you to check out my shared Google Doc at this link. It may be easer to follow, scroll through and filter(?) than it is here.



Three paragraphs about my methodology:
I'm using a similar methodology as last year. There are 179 whiskies listed in total. Thanks to my spreadsheet, I have data back to 2007 (the first year of the so-called whisky boom) for 116 of them. Last year I added a bunch of additional single malts. At that point Winesearcher only had data as far back as 2011, which just happened to be the most successful of the "boom" years. There are 39 of those malts in the list. This year, I've updated the list with 24 more malts. Winesearcher only has January data as far back as 2013. So I've added an additional column with all the 2013 prices. (Also, RIP Benromach 21, Benromach 25, Clynelish DE, Glengoyne 17, Strathisla 12 and Scapa 16. There are too few retailers selling those malts, so the average prices are no longer reliable. Expect the RIP list add another 12 more malts next year.)

Because directly comparing a 10-year price change percentage with a 6-year price change percentage with a 4-year price change percentage is crap math, I'm using the same metric as I did last year to measure the increases: Multiple of Inflation (or MOI).  MOI takes the total price change and divides it by the US's inflation (CPI) rate over the related period of time (10, 6 or 4 years).  For the whiskies that start with the Jan2007 data, the inflation was 17.1% (or $1 in Jan2007 was worth $1.171 in Jan2017).  For the whiskies whose data starts with 2011, the inflation was 8% (or $1 in Jan2011 would be worth $1.08 in Jan2017). For the whiskies whose data starts with 2013, the inflation was 4.2% (or $1 in Jan2013 was worth $1.042 in Jan2017).

The color-coding is based on the MOI, as follows:
Dark blue = price actually decreased, thus a negative MOI
Light blue = price increased between 0 and the actual rate of inflation
Green = price increased between 1 and 2 times the rate of inflation
Light pink = price increased between 2 and 5 times the rate of inflation
Fire Truck Red = price increased between 5 and 10 times the rate of inflation
Black = price increased more than 10 times the rate of inflation

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ANALYSIS

There are going to be fewer charts than last year, as I try to do my best to avoid comparing apples to Ledaigs. Let's take a quick look at the price increase between January 2016 and January 2017.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflated 1.5% in 2016. When finding the average of the 179 whiskies from the above spreadsheet, one finds the average single malt had a price increase of 4.35% in 2016. In 2015, whisky prices increased 8 times the rate of the CPI. In 2016, these single malts increased slightly less than 3 times the CPI. While prices increased slower, they still increased considerably faster than the country's consumer goods and services. On the other hand, that percentage increase is considerably less than the 14% increase in price/liter of Scotch whisky exports to the United States.

But as I've found in years past, whisky age categories don't see their prices change at the same rates, so there is no "average" whisky. So here's how each age statement group's prices went up in 2016.

Note: this is the only chart to use percentages

In the big picture, this chart shows us what we've seen in previous years. The older the whisky, the faster its price goes up. The 25-29yo category was particularly excitable thanks to huge jumps by Highland Park 25 (again) and Macallan 25 (again). Also, one can no longer just write off the NAS category because it is now the second largest "age statement" category on the spreadsheet, with 31 separate whiskies. The NAS whiskies' prices are now going up at the same rate, or faster than most starter single malts with age statements.

Actually, just for kicks. Here's another chart of the age statement categories by whisky count:

Yeah, let that NAS count sink in for a moment. Then consider the fact that number does not include all of the NAS bottlings that have come out over the past three years. NAS will probably be the largest category in the spreadsheet within the next two years.

Anyway, back to rising whisky prices.

Let's take that Average Price Increase idea and see what has happened over the past 10 years, using the MOI metric.

What shocks me is how incredibly tidy these numbers turned out. As each category increases in age, its prices escalate at a greater rate.

Again this does not mean 8 to 10 year old whiskies barely went up in price over the past ten years. It means they went up in price at almost the same rate as the US consumer price index during the same time period. General price inflation was up more than 17% during the past 10 years, so the price of the average 8-10yo common single malt in the US has gone up somewhere between 18% and 20% during that time period.

As a whisky consumer (though barely a consumer at this point), I think it's reasonable for a popular single malt's price to go up slightly faster than inflation. There was a great increase in demand for single malts in the United States during over the past ten years. That's why I don't sweat the price increases in the green range in the spreadsheet. It's when single malts start doubling, tripling or quadrupling the rate of inflation that a certain nerd starts writing a post called "What Was the Scotch Whisky Boom?"

When it comes to 25+ year old single malts, the industry seems to have moved as a whole to create and expand an ultra-ultra-luxury whisky market. They're still searching for the ceiling.

Younger, cheaper single malts are going up in price, but at a gradual rate. The rise in teenage whisky prices seemed to have calmed down in 2016. But long-aged whisky has moved into another solar system, a place where a single malt twice as old can cost 20 to 30 times as much.

Remember, the influence of importers, distributors and retailers on these prices cannot be overstated. The price per liter (in GBP) of exported Scotch went up 2% in 2015, about 4 times US inflation, while these single malts' prices rose 4%, or 8 times inflation. In 2016, that price per liter (in GBP) went up nearly 9 times US inflation (before the pound dropped) in the first half 2016 alone, but our single malts' prices rose under 3 times inflation for the year. As I've referenced, inflation will cause price changes, as will swings in exchange rates.

The price still goes up in Scotch whisky's most lucrative market because American humans keep buying expensive booze. The best some of us can hope for in the near future is a plateau to form on the line graph. In the meantime, you don't have to buy that one whisky bottle over there, but the fact is, someone else will. Are you okay with that?

Scotch Ain't Dead Yet, Part 2: The very much alive pricing of single malts in the USA

In Part 1 of this series, I included a section that highlighted the drop in whisky exports to the US in 2014.  Declines happened in volume, value, and price per liter.  Price per liter for scotch whisky exported to the United States dropped by almost 2%.  But keep in mind, that includes both malt and blended whiskies.  Because malt whisky's price/liter (worldwide) went up 1.45% that year, it's quite possible that prices on exported single malt to the US went up a little.

But all of that is a really macro, big picture, view of prices.  What we as consumers see on the ground here doesn't reflected those changes.  For instance, between 2008 and 2014 the worldwide exports of malt whisky increased in price by 12%.  During that time, the prices we saw at American retailers tripled that rate.  So, why are our prices going up faster?  Keep in mind that the numbers I'm getting from the Scotch Whisky Association are for the value declared at the time of export from the UK (and it's in GBP not USD).  By the time we see the bottles on the shelf the importers, distributors, and retailers have further increased the price for their own profit.

Now we've just begun 2016.  That "almost 2%" drop I mentioned above was for all whiskies exported to the US in 2014.  In the first half of 2015 (*hinting at Friday's post*) scotch whisky exported to the US dropped almost another half percent.  But the single malt prices we see every day continue to rise.  I will be focusing on this single malt price inflation today.

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As I wrote last year, here's some background on the data below:
I am using Wine Searcher's Average Wine Price system, selecting only US retailers.  Their site has an explanation behind how they arrive at averages.  To summarize, they do not include auctions; all prices are adjusted to 750mL bottles; they remove the highest and lowest 20% prices in order to correct for pricing errors or egregious retailer choices.  Aside from the ability to scroll through pricing history, Wine Searcher's big draw for data purposes is their retailer count.  For instance, if you search for Johnnie Walker Black Label they'll actually stop their listings at 500 retailers.  Their system has over 350 450 retailers selling Talisker 10.  So they are pulling from a very large data set.  And, anecdotally, their site has proven very reliable and accurate in my searches for beers, wines, whiskies, brandies, etc.  But please note, this is not an advertisement for Wine Searcher.  Their Average Wine Price history requires a paid subscription and I've been known to mooch off of other people's accounts from time to time.

I encourage you to check out my shared Google Doc at this link.  There's a lot of info to be seen and it's probably more directly useful than the rest of this post, so enjoy!



A few words about my methodology:
There are some important changes to the data this year, compared to last year.  Firstly, there are more whiskies!  While 3/4s of the products listed measure prices going back to 2007, there's a large number of products for whom there was either no data for January 2007 or it was unreliable.  Last year I had selected January 2007 data because '07 was the first year of the so-called whisky boom, and it was the earliest data that Winesearcher listed.  For the whiskies new to this list, I am going with their January 2011 data for three reasons.  Firstly, 2011 was the second (and largest) whisky boom year.  Secondly, I already had the 2011 prices listed for the other whiskies, which I used to show periodic price increases.  Thirdly, 2011 is the earliest data that Wine Searcher now lists.

Because mushing together a 9-year price change percentage with a 5-year price change percentage is not responsible mathematics, I am including a new metric to bring the numbers closer together: Multiple of Inflation (or MOI if you like).  MOI takes the total price change and divides it by the US's inflation (CPI) rate over the related period of time (9 years or 5 years).  For the whiskies that start with the Jan2007 data, the inflation was 14.5% (or $1 in Jan2007 would be worth $1.145 today).  For the whiskies whose data starts with 2011, the inflation was 5.5% (or $1 in Jan2011 would be worth $1.055 today).

The color-coding is based on the MOI, as follows:
Dark blue = price actually decreased, thus a negative MOI
Light blue = price increased between 0 and the actual rate of inflation
Green = price increased between 1 and 2 times the rate of inflation
Light pink = price increased between 2 and 5 times the rate of inflation
Fire Truck Red = price increased between 5 and 10 times the rate of inflation
Black = price increased more than 10 times the rate of inflation

Please feel free to peruse this list here or on the Google Doc to your very heart's desire (I think you can bookmark the Google Doc as well).  You're also welcome to ignore the analysis below, but there are a lot of fun graphs down there, including two that are shaped like pie.

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ANALYSIS

I will start with 2015 as that is more immediate (and new-ish!).  Plus I'll be able to compare exact percentages.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflated all of 0.5% in 2015, so a January 2015 dollar is worth $1.005 today (January 2016).  Meanwhile, if I take the average of all of the 161 whiskies in the spreadsheet above, I find that the average single malt had a price increase of 3.95% in 2015.  That is eight times the rate of the CPI.  That's a lot and that's fast.  If a whisky's price moved eight times the rate of inflation for the past nine years, that would be like having your $40 whisky from 2007 now going for $86 in 2016.  But there really is no "average" single malt.  There are different age statements, companies, and distilleries.  So here's how 2015's price boost breaks out:

click to embiggen

This shouldn't come as a total surprise to many of us.  Old whiskies continue to go up in price very quickly.  What's happening here is a separation in pricing tiers.  The NAS, 8-10yos, and 11-13yos increased at almost the exact same rate (1.70% to 1.78%), while the further right/older you go on the chart the quicker the price balloons.  17 to 24 year old whiskies are being established on one level, 25 to 29s on another, and 30+ on its own.  These are tiers of luxury.  We'll return to this subject throughout.

Here's a breakdown by distillery:

Note: distilleries with only one whisky on the list were removed for accuracy and clarity purposes

And here's the same chart using the MOI metric rather than percentages, just to get you used to it.

Yes, Talisker and Macallan lead the way, by quite some distance, with Highland Park in third.  All three of these distilleries have a number of long-aged whiskies on the list and, without exception, all greatly increased in price.  I don't have much of an explanation for Aberfeldy and Hazelburn, but it's nice to see their results.  For the record, 30 of these distilleries had price increases greater than the CPI, 8 has increases less than the CPI.

By looking at the distillery chart, you can start to get an idea which companies are behind the overall price increases...

Note: owners with only one whisky on the list were removed for accuracy and clarity purposes

What this chart doesn't take into account is how many single malts each owner has on the price list.  So if I weight the numbers by taking that into account, we can see who is responsible for the overall price increase:

So, perhaps all companies and all distilleries are not equally guilty in price gouging...

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That was 2015, a relatively small period of time.  Let's take a look at the entire window captured in the pricing spreadsheet, from 2007 (or 2011) to today.

Again, the idea is that there is no "average" whisky here because whiskies from different distilleries, different owners, and with different age statement increased at different rates.  Let's start with the Increase-by-age-statement chart.

Though another year passed and I added that 2015 data and I altered my methods, this year's chart looks almost identical to last year's chart.  Though it's more balanced than the 2015 graph, we're still seeing the movement towards the luxury pricing tiers by scotch whisky producers, distributors, and retailers.  Of the 19 whiskies on this list that are 25 years or older, eleven of them doubled in price.  A few even tripled and quadrupled.  Is this really due to scarcity or is it a psychological ploy?  Only the producers know.  And if people are paying the price, then the increases will continue.

Meanwhile, if you look at the left half of the chart, you can see an effort has been made to keep the prices of younger whiskies from inflating too much.  Starter single malts creep up in price slower in order to not scare off too many regular customers, thus establishing the first pricing tier.  Of course, every party involving the pricing are making it difficult for anyone who wants to move up to the next rung of a favorite distillery's range.  A once a year splurge no longer buys what it used to.  So why splurge on whisky?

But again, not every distillery is upping its prices at the same rate.

Even if you enlarge this chart it's still pretty crowded, but I included for completists.  To clear up the data, I'll include only the distilleries that have multiple products in the list...

Good news first.  There are eleven distilleries whose single malts' prices increased slower than the rate of inflation.  Yay!  If you're looking for a midpoint on the chart, it's Glenfarclas whose rate matches the overall average of 2.7 (which is in the 28-32% range).  Most of the distilleries to the right of Glenfarclas, especially those with the biggest increases, will probably not be much of a surprise to many of us.  Most of the distilleries with the largest average price increases are the distilleries that have established long-aged (read: ultra-luxury) single malts on the market: Macallan, Talisker, Glenfiddich, Highland Park, Glenlivet, Balvenie, etc.  Now let's see how this reads when comparing the distillery owners...

First of all, kudos to the 1/3rd of the owners who have raised their prices slower than the rate of inflation!  It's unfair to lay equal blame on Arran, Bacardi, or LVMH(!) with the likes on the right side of the graph.  J&A Mitchell (Springbank) sits as low as it does because their regular range (included in the list) hasn't changed in price much, though their limited edition items (not in the list) have almost doubled in price.  Meanwhile, J&G Grant (Glenfarclas) sits at the average/mean again.  Emperador inherited the sins of United Spirits.  Diageo doesn't crack the top three since, other than Talisker, the rest of their distilleries' increases were relatively moderate.  William Grant has Glenfiddich's and Balvenie's older bottlings.  And then there's Edrington.  Edrington, Edrington.  It's not like they have only two whiskies on this list unfairly bringing their average.  They have fourteen.

So if I take all these years and all these whiskies then find out who's responsible for what part of the price boost pie by weighting the amount of products from each producer...

Edrington's products make up 8% of the whiskies of the list, but are responsible for 24% of the overall price inflation.  Meanwhile, The BenRiach Distilling Company's products make up 7% of the list, but are responsible for 2% of the total inflation.

To be fair, again, the responsibility for these price increases does not fall entirely on the producers.  Importers, distributors, and retailers leave their own (sometimes) invisible footprint on the final price.  Some of these companies feel like they can inflate the price of brands which are marketed as luxury.  This is why one can find a bottle of Macallan 18 selling for $195 and $325, or Glenfiddich 40 selling for $3500 and $5000, at stores in the same city.

The one question I leave you the consumer with is how do you put a price on the importance of this brown liquid?  What's your breaking point?  How do you feel about the pricing tiers separating you from your favorites?  Okay, yeah, I know it sucks.  But do you think these price changes are motivated by actual market conditions?  Maybe that was more than one question.

I think the price of scotch is a problem that extends to the blends when it comes to the aged brown spirits available worldwide.  Can producers maintain an illusion of luxury or romance when the quality is not competitive at the price point?  I'll look at this further on Friday's post and then wrap it up with some stats from the first half of 2015.

What Was the Scotch Whisky Boom? Part 2: Single Malt Prices in the US between 2007 and 2015

On Tuesday, I took a look at where the aggressive growth was happening during the Scotch Boom.  While volume was indeed up, it had really only grown 20% over 30 years.  But during the same period, export value grew 470%.  Exports were the engine behind the growth since UK consumption had fallen drastically.  Aged malt stocks were declining at a decent clip, but malt production increased once those older stocks started getting bottled at a faster pace.  As a percentage of exports, single malts were growing rapidly and exports to the United States were also burgeoning, especially when considering sale value.

I was probably a little nuts to go as far back as 1980, and should have focused more on the boom time.  2007 was a major lift off year as the annual volume shot past 300 million liters and value jumped 14%.  Between 2007 and 2013, export volume was up 8%, while value was up 51%.  Again, note where the real growth is happening: £££.  Between 2008 and 2013, Scotch's largest export market, the United States, had a 19% growth in volume and a 120% growth in value.

With growing single malt sales driving growth and the US market zooming along, I'm going to take a look at single malt prices in the US between the years of 2007 and 2015.

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Background on the data:
I am using Wine Searcher's Average Wine Price system, selecting only US retailers.  Their site has an explanation behind how they arrive at averages.  To summarize, they do not include auctions; all prices are adjusted to 750mL bottles; they remove the highest and lowest 20% prices in order to correct for pricing errors or egregious retailer choices.  Aside from the ability to scroll through pricing history, Wine Searcher's big draw for data purposes is their retailer count.  For instance, if you search for Johnnie Walker Black Label they'll actually stop their listings at 500 retailers.  Their system has over 350 retailers selling Talisker 10.  So they are pulling from a very large data set.  And, anecdotally, their site has proven very reliable and accurate in my searches for beers, wines, whiskies, brandies, etc.  But please note, this is not an advertisement for Wine Searcher.  Their Average Wine Price history requires a paid subscription and I've been known to mooch off of other people's accounts from time to time.

I have also only included single malts for which Wine Searcher has a full history starting in January 2007.  So you will not find a number of well known whiskies in my chart.  Some of our faves didn't hit the market or the system's history doesn't have enough data until 2008 or later.  Distilleries like Bruichladdich are not represented at all because they haven't had a single expression that stayed on the market for these eight years.  Also, I've noted when questionable data pops up in the "Notes" column to the right of the "Total Increase" column.

I encourage you to check out my shared Google Doc at this link.  I'm not sure what you see on a "shared" doc, but I hope it'll let you sort or filter.  There's a lot of info to be seen and it's probably more useful than the rest of this post, so enjoy!



Because I'm looking at these prices from the point of view of the whisky drinker, I considered his or her financial reality when color coding the price increases.  The National Average Wage Index went up 11% between 2007 and 2013.  Between 2007 and 2014, the US's Consumer Price Index rose 14%.  Using those numbers, I got to 15% as a midpoint between the rise in wages and inflation over the expanded eight years.

No whisky producer is going to 15% on the nose so I gave them some wiggle room and assigned the green color a range of 10-20%.  Light blue notates a 0-10% rise. Any whisky that went down in price since 2007 gets a cool dark blue.  On the other side of things, a whisky that went up between 20.1% and 50% gets pinked.  50.1% to 100% gets a darker pink/red.  And a whisky that had an increase of over 100% (yes, there are some) gets a fire truck red.

Now, I was going to just share the list with you and say, "Have fun!", and leave it at that.  I quite seriously have commentary on every single one of the listed whiskies.  But since we have only so many hours on this planet, I'll limit my observations.

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Charts!

Please note, these charts are not as solid as Tuesday's, since every whisky is weighted the same here.  If the sales counts were available for each one, I'd be happy to weigh them thusly.  So I wouldn't recommend leaning too heavily on these visuals.

BY AGE GROUP

Note: the stacked graph totals in the first chart do not match the final totals in the second chart exactly since each year's increase gets compounded.

These two are my favorite graphs from this post, as they're less unbalanced than the others below.

The charts reveal both the most obvious shift in pricing and the seizing of the luxury market.  Almost without exception, old malts' prices skyrocketed.  Perhaps it was due to scarcity or it was the realization by marketing units that Old Whisky could be the next Old Cognac or Old Bordeaux.  There was an ultra-luxury market to be tapped.  And tapped it was.

Meanwhile, starter (younger and cheaper) malts increased somewhere around the CPI inflation range.  As whiskies increased in age, so does the rate at which their prices grew.  This all fits a narrative creepily well.  I was relieved to see the non-age statement whiskies remain conservative, but then again the real NAS crop has only been on the market a couple of years.  It's also cute how Glenlivet 12 and Glenfiddich 12 dance instep perfectly like an old couple, at 25.71%.

BY OWNERSHIP

Note: As noted above these charts are occasionally comparing apples to oranges. Glenfiddich 12 should not carry the same weight at Glenfiddich 40 due to the massive difference in units sold.  These charts are only meant as a brief summary.  The spreadsheet has the good stuff.  Also, for these two graphs I've removed the owners who had only one whisky in the spreadsheet.

Well, this sadly proves what we all knew well.  The Edrington Group is at the forefront of price hikes, from Macallan to Highland Park.  They take it sort of easy with their 12 year olds, but then it gets gory.  The pricing on the Mac 18 and HP 18 have led even the uninquistive to wonder what the heck is going on.

Meanwhile, for all of my griping about Diageo's price increases, they're not as terrible as other better loved companies'.  Their Classic Malts' pricing increases average in the high-20s while the Distillers Editions are in the low teens.  Frankly, it's only Talisker whom they decided was vastly underpriced and did so after 2011.  In the stacked graph above, that big red bar over Diageo's name is entirely fueled by Talisker's price hikes.

The Springbank folks have barely moved their prices.  And, surprisingly, the same goes for the LVMH whiskies.  No one should be shocked if one of those two companies start raising their prices soon.  The other surprise is William Grant standing at number 2.  Their 12s had light red boosts, but all of the older bottlings had huge price bumps.

BY DISTILLERY

Hmm, at least this chart is slightly better than the ownership ones.  But it does have one-offs like Tamdhu and Longmorn standing with multi-whiskied names like Glenmorangie and Glenfarclas.

But, look who sits amongst the tallest bars, Macallan and Glenfiddich, the two best-selling single malts in the world.  Glenlivet and Balvenie, two other major sellers, sit not too far behind.  It makes one appreciate Glenmorangie (4th best-selling malt) and its negligible increases.  Laphroaig and Ardbeg haven't moved much, yet.  Meanwhile, all of Bowmore's whiskies went up in price significantly.  GlenDronach is too high up on the list due to what might be a data error, but BenRiach sits in a very good position as they haven't really moved their prices in eight years.

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There are some interesting stories with the individual malts.  Laphroaig 10 hasn't gone up in price as much as I'd thought it had, neither has the Cask Strength and Quarter Cask.  Who knows what Suntory will do with that reality, especially since they've raised the prices on all of their other products quite a bit.  I was very happy to see so many cells in blue from companies I like (Arran, BenRiach, Benromach, and Springbank).  And while most of the big distilleries plumped many of their prices, quieter distilleries like Glen Moray and Tomintoul kept some whiskies in the blue.  And half of this country is paying more than $44 for Glenlivet 12?  Yeesh.

What we don't really see in the spreadsheet is where the truly massive US export price/liter growth, as noted in yesterday's post, comes from.  The SWA says the price per liter of US scotch exports grew more than 80% between 2007 and 2013 alone.  Comparatively, the sheet underestimates single malt prices increases.  In the spreadsheet, I would say that even if we weighted the larger distilleries more, we're not seeing an increase of more than 45%, though probably closer to 40%.

(Taking Big Brother Blend into consideration, Dewar's White and Johnnie Walker Red's prices rose about 23% in 8 years.  Black Label's went up 28%.  Chivas 12's rose 20% and 18's 24%.  Grant's went up 21%, J&B only 8%.  Ballantine's went up 43%, but that doesn't take us any closer.)

At this point I can only theorize about the difference.  Since Wine Searcher lists the retail prices, could it be that the retailers themselves were absorbing a lot of the brunt as they bought their supply from distributors?  Thus they hoped to turn a profit from quantity rather than blowing up their prices any further?  Or, by "topping and tailing" the top and bottom 20% in their data set, does Wine Searcher miss out on the larger retailers who charge prices high above the average?  Wine Searcher does not include BevMo, a large national retail chain whose non-sale prices on single malts tend to be higher than most other stores in California.  My list cannot include newer malts, including (as already mentioned) all of the new NAS whiskies; perhaps those whiskies already went up in price?  While there are no independently bottled whiskies here -- and those have gotten much more expensive over the last two years -- they do not make up a significant part of national sales.  Or maybe it's all Macallan 18's fault.

Considering these elements, we could be accounting for a price rise of 45-50%.  That is still punishing to whisky drinkers.  If the wage index went up around 14% over those eight years and inflation went up 16%, we're certainly not sitting on any extra discretionary cash here.  From the drinker's standpoint, how are we going to keep paying for this?

For the whisky producers who have profited off the value boom, how is this a sustainable business model?  Do you expect the structure to hold as you raise prices two-and-a-half to three times the rate of inflation indefinitely?  And how many shaky quarterly reports does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

Or has the vaunted growth already started to give way to a plateau or loss?  In Part 3, I'll consider if The Boom was, not is.