Monthly newsletter for January 2022

Dear All,

Here’s wishing you a happy new year and start to 2022!

It has been a flying start out of the gates for the Collective this year, with the portfolio achieving a significant return this month due to tailwinds of a stronger SGD and some significant jumps in our portfolio. The Karuizawa 1981 Eight Headed Dragon performed exceptionally well with a +59% jump to £10,500 and the Karuizawa 1980 35 Year Old Moon Above Daimotsu Bay moved +60% to £9,600. Both these bottles had not featured in an auction for more than 2 years, so it is great to see our strategy paying off. This puts us on track to over-achieve our +12% annual benchmark again, with a full quarter to go before we close out the 3rd year of operations (well ahead of schedule!)

SVC received ongoing media support in December, with another multi-page article in the December print and online edition of Millionaire Asia magazine. Given the rise of alternative investment assets ranging from collectible watches to handbags, we continue to get interest from the press on what we are building here in the whisky space. Asia continues to be a strong and growing base for whisky collecting, with some of the oldest whiskies in the world hitting Singapore recently, Pernod investing in a new brand and distillery in China that will open to visitors in 2023, and a fast-changing landscape in India’s whisky appreciation clubs.

We foresee ongoing auctions by established brands that will continue to bring excitement into the category this year (starting with the Highland Park 50yr old at Bonham’s Hong Kong next week), but which will likely cause some frothiness in the market for inexperienced investors who are not familiar with the liquid they are investing in. The macro landscape is also an unknown at the moment, with ongoing tax legislation being discussed between governments that could play in our favour if we have some luck (most recently with whisky tax treaties being discussed between UK and India, which would be a positive outcome for the category). All in all it makes for an exciting year for the industry and the Collective.

As things hopefully start to return to normal after Covid, and for those of you that will finally be flying internationally again, hopefully you will be able to visit some of the great whisky bars globally soon, as well as popping by WhiskyBrother Bar for a dram too!

Marek, Marc, Neil, Gary