The Whisky Barrel create the first digitally certified Scotch whisky
This year The Whisky Barrel is celebrating its 15th anniversary. To celebrate
they have introduced a bottle of Glen Moray single malt whisky that will cost £350. The bottle will contain a QR code to authenticate its legitimacy, making it the first scotch whisky to have this feature.
Each bottle has been aged for 30 years in a first-fill sherry hogshead cask with the ABV residing at 54.8%. You can still currently buy a bottle from The Whisky Barrel today to own a part of history.
More information about this Glen Moray bottle
Only 152 bottles will be available for purchase with the first 30 having unique NFTs of the bottle to make it even more of a collector’s item. Each bottle however will have a unique QR code allowing you to scan and find information about the cask type and what distillery it came from.
The Whisky reportedly has hints of peach, grapefruit, butter fudge and vanilla. Obviously, with a bottle being produced and distilled for 30 years at Glen Moray, we can expect it to be a smooth and well balanced single malt whisky.
What is an NFT?
The acronym itself stands for non-fungible token. They are typically digital pieces of art with their own unique encoding meaning that each NFT can only be owned by one person.
NFTs come with built in authentication to show you are the original owner, this acts as proof of ownership.
Making whisky part of the new NFT projects
The Whisky Barrel are not the first company to use NFTs to sell their product. December of 2021 saw Pernod Ricard sell an NFT of their Royal Salute Time Series 51 Year Old 2021 Release.
For $35,000 customers could buy an NFT of the bottle from BlockBar. This would then give them an option to exchange the NFT for the physical product. The bottle itself even came in a one-off crystal decanter featuring a 24 carat gold plaque.
Macallan even sold a whole cask of their 30 year old whisky with an NFT for $2.3 million as well. The sale was done in partnership with Origin Protocol another company known for distributing NFTs.
With the current market for NFTs The Investment Bank Jeffries raised its market cap to $35 billion for 2022 and has estimated to increase to $80 billion by 2025. This means investors believe products with related NFTs are likely to increase significantly in value in the next three years. Therefore, with the most expensive NFT selling for $70 million alone, we can expect more whisky brands to launch new projects around NFTs.
Why digital certifications are the future
With the market for selling rare whisky’s still being popular, you might have not known that counterfeits are also on the rise. An article from 2018 showed that when they had a laboratory test 55 bottles of whisky, they found 21 of them were fake. The collection tested was believed to have been originally worth £635,000.
Introducing a system that can make it easier to detect fakes or at least authenticate real scotch whisky could be the future. With roughly £41 million worth of fake whisky circulating the market today, this practice could be helpful for both consumers and distilleries.
UKV International AG’s primary business centres around acquiring, supplying, and selling bonded whisky.
We supply for consumption and or investment depending on our client’s requirements and offer a brokerage service for those who wish to sell investment-grade whiskey held in UK regulated bond.
We are here to assist you with choosing which whisky to invest in and to guarantee your cask is put away accurately and safely. Regardless of whether you will drink, gift or sell your whisky.
To find out more, contact us here.
