The First Fill
The same two hundred litres, but the barrel has held bourbon once and nothing since, and it gets ten years rather than eight. It costs eight hundred and fifty pounds more than the refill barrel and it gives you twenty-five fewer bottles. We would rather put that sentence at the top of the page than bury it, because it is the whole argument: you are buying the spirit, not the volume.
| Capacity | 200 litres |
|---|---|
| Wood | First-fill ex-bourbon American standard barrel |
| Filled at | 63.5% ABV |
| Window | 10 years |
| Angel’s share | 2.9% a year — 51.0 litres in total |
| Expected outturn | 149.0 litres at 55.0% ABV |
| You receive | ≈255 bottles, 700ml at 46% ABV |
| Price | £4,250, fixed at purchase |
The specification.
The cask
- Capacity
- 200 litres
- Wood
- First-fill ex-bourbon
- Filled at
- 63.5% ABV
- Cask number
- Stencilled on the head, and it is yours
The window
- Years in wood
- 10
- Angel’s share
- 2.9% a year51.0 litres over the whole window
- Expected outturn
- 149.0 litres at 55.0% ABVA regauge, not a promise
- Storage and insurance
- Included, for the whole window
What you receive
- Bottles
- ≈255700ml at 46% ABV, non-chill-filtered, uncoloured
- Cash
- None, at any pointThis is the entire point of the structure
- Duty and VAT
- Payable by you on withdrawalSee the duty page for the arithmetic
- Labels
- Cask number, fill date, outturn date, bottle number
The only figure on this page that is contractually fixed is the price. Everything after the fill date is an expectation based on what this warehouse has actually done.
What you are actually buying.
The same two hundred litres, but the barrel has held bourbon once and nothing since, and it gets ten years rather than eight. It costs eight hundred and fifty pounds more than the refill barrel and it gives you twenty-five fewer bottles. We would rather put that sentence at the top of the page than bury it, because it is the whole argument: you are buying the spirit, not the volume.
You are buying goods — a specific, numbered, ascertained cask of spirit — at a fixed price, to be delivered to you as bottles at the end of a stated window. You are not buying a share of anything, a right to any cash sum, or an interest in the distillery, the barn or the farm.
The cask is identified by number from the day it is filled, which matters more than it sounds: ascertained goods are your goods, not a slice of an undifferentiated bulk that somebody else could draw down.
- Capacity: 200 litres
- Wood: First-fill ex-bourbon American standard barrel
- Filled at: 63.5% ABV
- Window: 10 years
- Angel’s share: 2.9% a year — 51.0 litres in total
- Expected outturn: 149.0 litres at 55.0% ABV
- You receive: ≈255 bottles, 700ml at 46% ABV
- Price: £4,250, fixed at purchase
The window, from your side.
You pay once
A fixed price, set on the day, never varied afterwards. Storage and insurance for the whole window are inside it.
We fill and stencil it
200 litres of new-make at 63.5% ABV, into first-fill ex-bourbon, on a named day, under a number that is yours.
It lies in bond
For 10 years, in an HMRC-approved excise warehouse on the estate, in duty suspension.
You get a note every year
Sampled, tasted, written up and sent — including the years when there is nothing interesting to say.
It is regauged
Expected at 149.0 litres and 55.0% ABV. The warehousekeeper measures it; we do not estimate it at that stage.
It is bottled and it arrives
≈255 bottles at 46% ABV. Duty and VAT fall due on the day it leaves the warehouse, and they are yours to pay.
What the angels take from this one.
The cheerful way to describe evaporation is a share for the angels. The honest way is to count the bottles it costs you.
Not an investment
Maturing is a fixed-price forward purchase of a numbered cask of spirit, delivered to you as bottles. There is no cash return, no profit share, no buy-back, no valuation and no secondary market. It is the same structure as Plotting and it is held to the same line. Plotting is a fixed-price forward purchase of produce, delivered in kind. It is not an investment, there is no cash return, no profit share, and no secondary market. We are emphatic about this because the alternative — paying people a cash share of a harvest they had no hand in managing — is an unauthorised collective investment scheme under section 235 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, and a criminal offence.
The other five casks
What duty costs when it comes out.
Excise duty is charged per litre of pure alcohol on the day the spirit leaves bond. There is a worked example.
