Choosing a cask.

The distillery is where the spirit was made. Scotland's whisky-producing regions — Speyside, Highland, Islay, Lowland, Campbeltown and the Islands — are a useful shorthand for a general style, but they're a starting point, not a rule: two distilleries in the same region can taste very differently, and a single distillery's own character can vary from cask to cask.

Every cask record on this site shows its real distillery, and the region it's conventionally grouped in, where that's established.

Scotch whisky must be matured in oak. What was in that oak cask before it held whisky shapes a lot of what ends up in the glass:

• Bourbon casks (used American oak) typically bring vanilla, coconut and a lighter, sweeter oak character. Most Scotch matures in ex-bourbon wood.
• Sherry casks (European or American oak, seasoned with sherry) typically bring dried fruit, dark sugar and spice, and often a deeper colour.
• Wine and port casks work similarly to sherry casks — seasoned with a different fortified or red wine, bringing their own fruit and colour character.

A cask's own real cask type — where recorded — is shown on its record page.

"First fill" means the cask is holding whisky for the first time since it previously held bourbon, sherry or wine. A first-fill cask generally imparts more wood character, faster. "Refill" means the cask has already been used at least once before for whisky — it generally imparts less wood character, letting more of the distillery's own spirit character show through. Neither is inherently "better" — they produce different, both entirely legitimate, styles.

A cask's strength — its alcohol by volume, or ABV — falls naturally over time as the spirit matures and some alcohol evaporates (the "angel's share"). Spirit typically fills a cask in the mid-60s% ABV and drifts downward from there; the real, current ABV recorded for a cask reflects wherever it actually is now, not a fixed starting figure.

A cask's physical volume (how many litres of liquid it holds) isn't the same as its litres of alcohol — the actual quantity of pure alcohol inside it, once ABV is accounted for. Litres of alcohol is the more useful figure for comparing casks of different sizes and strengths on a like-for-like basis, which is why every cask's price on this site is also shown per litre of alcohol.

Both figures naturally reduce a little over time through evaporation — a real, expected part of how a cask matures, not a defect.

A cask's age is simply how long it's been maturing since it was filled. Three real, general facts worth knowing:

• Scotch whisky must be matured in oak casks in Scotland for at least three years before it can legally be called Scotch (Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009).
• Where a bottle carries an age statement, it refers to the youngest whisky in it — not necessarily this cask's own age if it's ever blended with others.
• Age shapes a whisky's character. It isn't an indication of what a cask might be worth in future.

Where a cask has a real, recorded fill date, its record page shows its current age and when it reaches common age statements.

We can't tell you which cask will rise in value, and we don't offer investment advice of any kind. A cask's eventual worth depends on far more than what's on its record: how the market for that distillery and style moves, bottling decisions nobody has made yet, and plenty that simply can't be known in advance. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing, however confidently.

What we can do is show you exactly what's genuinely known about a cask today, and be equally clear about what isn't.