Get a sip of history for Rs 8.2 lakh!

NEW DELHI: Whisky may be risky from the health point of view, but it is slowly becoming a good deal for investment. For those looking beyond real estate and art, here is the latest: A rare whisky collection! Their prices appreciate pretty fast: from £250 (Rs 20,720) to £1,000 (Rs 82,000) in a couple of years.
Thanks to disposable incomes that have helped Indian Buying Power go up by more than a few pegs, spending Rs 82,000 for a bottle of rare whisky is no big deal.In fact, whisky worth Rs 8 lakh too has found buyers in the sura land.
India is fast becoming a market for vintage whisky brands ranging between £300-10,000 a bottle (Rs 24,865-Rs 8,28,836) — brands that are found in the cellars of the Queen of England and the Prince of Denmark.
"India is the fastest-growing market in South Asia and is among the top five buyers in Asia along with Japan and Hong Kong,"says Sandeep Arora, a representative of William Grant’s, a whisky company with a rare collection. Every month some 20-25 bottles are being sold in India. And look who’s buying them — top corporate executives, industrialists, first-generation entrepreneurs, international travellers and, of course, royal families.
Some of these rare brands — like the 1973 Ladyburn single malt, which comes from a distillery that shut shop 30 years ago, or The 1964 Girvan, that is among the first batch distilled at a grain distillery — have only a handful of bottles left in the world. And The 1937 Glenfiddich was laid when World War II was being planned. So every ‘sip of history’ you take, makes them that much more rare.
For those who can’t afford a bottle, there are hotels offering them. A 30 ml peg of The 1964 Glenfiddich for example, will set you back by Rs 7,500. "We have just five of the rare brands available and every month 6-8 customers come asking for them,"says a Maurya Sheraton executive.
These rare bottles are sold only through "whisper marketing", and is offered at a personal level. They are ‘allocated’ from parent companies abroad and are being lapped up by Indians.
The most popular range of whisky is the £500-1,000 (Rs 41,441-Rs 82,000) one, but The Balvenie Cask 191, aged 50 years, selling at £6,000 (Rs 4,97,301) has also found takers. Digest this: "Two buyers — from Delhi and Chennai — have shown interest in the 68-year-old 1937 Glenfiddich,"says Arora. Only 61 bottles of this are left in the world and each bottle costs £10,000 (Rs 8,28,836).
"Rare whiskies are collector’s item. Though their consumption in the Indian market is very minuscule as compared to regular whiskies, the fact remains that there are people who are spending big bucks on them,"says R L Rajah of Diageo India, which owns the Johnnie Walker brand.