Back in 2020, just after the COVID lockdowns, I helped a client sell a vertical collection of Macallan 18-Year-Old bottles for around £45,000. His father had bought him one every year, and when the collection finally went to market, the story went everywhere. It was a feel-good headline at a time when the world desperately needed one.
Since then, countless people have asked me the same question: is the Macallan 18-Year-Old Sherry Oak a good investment? With the 2026 release now on shelves, it is time to give an honest answer.
Let me be blunt: No, it is not a good investment in the traditional sense. Most people started collecting on the back of that headline-grabbing sale. If you had begun buying a bottle each April at £350 and instead put that same money into the Vanguard FTSE All-Share tracker, your £2,450 would be worth around £3,072 today, roughly 3.8% annual growth. Invest that in the Invesco QQQ NASDAQ 100 ETF, and you would be sitting on about £4,369, an average annual return of around 10%.
The numbers do not lie. Traditional markets will almost always outperform a bottle sitting on your shelf.
But here is the more nuanced answer: life lived perfectly according to the book is pretty boring. I personally collect the Macallan 18-Year-Old Sherry Oak series, and I have been doing so since my son James was born in 2018. Every year, I add another bottle, building a collection that will be waiting for him when he turns 18.
If the value has matured by then, fantastic. If it has not, we will have 18 phenomenal bottles of whisky to open together. That is a win either way.
What makes the Macallan 18 stand out is not just the whisky itself, which is very good, but its brand positioning.
Macallan is the Rolls-Royce, the Bentley of the whisky world. When you look at alternatives in the same price bracket that offer an annual release and a collectible series, the options are bleak.
Swatch lunar editions? Pandora charms? Swarovski ornaments? Nike Air Max collaborations where you are guessing your child’s shoe size a decade out? None of them comes close to the simplicity and prestige of walking into a shop every April, picking up the latest Macallan 18, and adding it to a growing collection. Job done.
The whisky market has admittedly cooled since 2022, with high interest rates and reduced consumer spending taking their toll. Macallan themselves still have the 2024 and 2025 editions available on its website, which is unusual. But geopolitics shift, markets cycle, and nobody knows what the landscape will look like in a decade.
My verdict is straightforward: always cover your traditional investment bases first. But once those are sorted, the Macallan 18-Year-Old Sherry Oak remains the best bottle on the market to tuck away as a little nest egg for your loved ones.
So, have you been building a collection of your own, or would you put every penny into the markets instead?
To hear my full thoughts on the subject, check out my YouTube video.
Read the full article at Why I Still Buy the Macallan 18 Every Year (Even Though It’s Not a “Good” Investment)
