I think I’ll start collecting Whiskey

It’s a Wednesday afternoon, it’s roughly 2 degrees outside, the kids are having a sleepover in Nana and Grandad’s, my wife is pampering herself in a Spa and I find myself sitting in front of a fire, a gas one, but a fire all the same, in Druids Glen Resort with a glass of 12 Year Old Redbreast to keep me company as I start work on my first real blog entry on the laptop….. Life is not bad in fairness!

I’ve always spoken of starting a whiskey collection and I’m sure my friends and family are probably sick of listening to me going on about it and not actually doing anything about it. I’ve always had a passing interest in Irish Whiskey and enjoyed the odd dram at various social outings but never really knew how to take the first step when it came to collecting.

I’ve been telling people for years to buy one bottle of Midleton Very Rare (MVR) each year and put it away. You’ll be surprised at what it will be worth in 10, 20, 30 years time, if you can resist drinking it, I’d tell them. A bottle on average will set you back €180, €15 a month or €3.46 per week which is the price of one cup of coffee! For this you could amass a collection that will give a potential return of tens of thousands for €3.46 a week!!!

So…..given that I was busy telling people what to do I figured maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and start a collection of my own but I’d so many questions.

Where do you start? Who do you talk to? What’s worth collecting? What’s not? If its expensive does that mean its worth buying? If it’s cheap am I wasting my time? Where will I keep it all? What shops should I deal with? Will they see me coming? Other then MVR what else is out there? These are only a few of the questions I had before starting. They’re questions that I didn’t know the answers to but I wanted to find out. So, back in August last year, I decided to start finding the answers to all these questions.

I was out and about in Dublin City centre with my wife and suggested that today might be the day where I take the plunge and buy my first bottle of whiskey to put away and start my collection. I was aware of the Celtic Whiskey Store on Dawson Street and had passed their window on so many occasions, staring at the wonderful display of whiskey from around the world and decided that this was the place to go to find my first bottle!

I sat down, had a coffee and worked out a per bottle budget. What can I afford, I thought to myself, let’s not get carried away I said, it’s your first bottle so go easy and let’s figure out this collecting game….. €200 later I walked out of the shop!!! Remember the budget I said I’d set? I’d blown it with my first purchase. Now, I have to point out that this was of my own making and nothing to do with fine staff of the Celtic Whiskey Store.

I went in and introduced myself, I said that I wanted to start collecting whiskey but didn’t know where to start. I explained that I had a budget for today’s purchase and needed advice on what to buy. I was full sure that I’d get the ‘Step in to my office’ treatment but I have to say I was really impressed with how the whole occasion played out. We went through lots of options with various prices and I wasn’t being pushed towards anything in particular. We looked at Irish and International whiskies and regardless of how many bottles I was shown I kept being drawn back to the Irish side of the shop and to one bottle in particular. I decided that not only was todays purchase going to be this particular bottle of Irish whiskey but all my future purchases would be Irish and hence Dave’s Irish Whiskey was born!

My purchase on this momentous day was a bottle of Power’s 16 Year Old Single Cask, No. 284, bottled exclusively for the Celtic Whiskey Store. It came in a stunning black box and equally impressive bottle. The budget had been blown but I was happy with my purchase.

‘You know that’s part of a series of single cask releases’ I was told……

Really? Sure it would be rude not to get the other ones I thought……..A collector was born………