Whiskey Rich: Luxury Liquor Trumps Stocks & Art Over Past Decade

Some of the world’s ultra-wealthy spend their money on luxury goods such as fine wines, expensive watches, or one-of-a-kind art pieces as a passion, but others consider them investments - and their returns do often end up paying off.

Visual Capitalist's Marcus Lu dives into the 10-year performance of various luxury good classes as of Q4 2023, according to the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index released as part of the 2024 Wealth Report. The 10-year return of the S&P 500 was included for additional context.

Rare Whisky Bottles Have Outperformed the S&P 500 Since 2013

Knight Frank’s index uses the weighted average of each individual asset, tracking sales of reference brands and pieces for each asset.

Over the past 10 years, rare whisky (or whiskey, depending on where it was made) has been the best performing luxury asset, appreciating by 280% and even besting the S&P 500.

Numerous sale records have been broken at auctions since COVID-19, with collectors sometimes shelling out millions for a single bottle. In November 2023 for example, a bottle of The Macallan Valerio Adami 60 Year Old (of which only 40 bottles were produced) sold for $2.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Before bidding commenced, Sotheby’s had given the bottle a high estimate of $1.5M.

Fine wine and luxury watches were the next two best performing luxury goods by 10-year returns, at +146% and +138% respectively.

At the bottom were jewelry (+37%), such as rings and necklaces, and colored diamonds (+8%), including rare pink and blue diamonds.