Tell us about how you got into the whisky industry?
I got into the drinks industry, like most people, as a consumer, then a collector, and eventually graduated to a geeky enthusiast. I actually turned my passion into a business as I was a large cask owner before I became a founder of Cask Trade. My historic journey and experience with buying casks was pretty bad and I took almost a year to rectify all of the misinformation and mistakes from my suppliers at the time. This is the main reason that I got involved in setting up Cask Trade. It was an easy business plan as I knew exactly what not to do.
Can you set out the services that Cask Trade offers?
Firstly, the company was set up specifically as a self-sustaining marketplace. A real trading platform for the full cask journey - from point of sale, through maturation, to exit. We designed several proven exit options, including trade sales and have an excellent relationship with independent bottlers and private clients globally. The point is to ensure the liquid ends up where it belongs - in a glass. Our expert team have decades of combined experience.
With a world-leading stock list, knowledgeable team, and a true passion for the liquid, we are best placed to help clients start their cask ownership journey.
We are a full service company managing the life cycle of a cask from beginning to end. This includes quality checking on stock purchase, filling our own wood as well as monitoring maturation and storage - physically and digitally - on our own system.
We are proud to have our very own bonded warehouse in the heart of Scotland’s Speyside region. All maintenance is kept under one roof, including cask sampling, re-gauging and inspections. This includes the ability to open your own private account and receive a full delivery order.
Clients can visit their cask at the Cask Trade warehouse and draw a sample directly from it in our newly built tasting room on-site. We can also taste the whisky for you and offer our opinion as well as tasting notes, but we go one step further to offer re-racking, finishing, and even blending.
When the time is right, we can bottle casks in the bottling facility next to the warehouse, handling all elements from label personalisation for private bottling, or a full trade service bottling. Of course, we can ship the finished product anywhere in the world.
In 2020, we established auctionyourcask.com as the world’s first online cask whisky auction platform. It offers cask owners, whisky enthusiasts and the trade the opportunity to buy and sell unique whisky casks with 0% seller’s fees. This is in addition to selling casks on consignment at any point in the year.
In terms of the trade, what sort of customers do you have, and what are they using mainly?
Simon Aron is working closely with The Drinks Trust and running a whisky masterclass with them on September 15i
Our customers include everybody from private partnerships (personal/events/corporate), whisky clubs, small independent bottlers, to world-renowned bottlers. These customers are from across the world, from Asia Pacific, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America.
They are mainly interested in single malt whisky from Scotland, anywhere from six years old to 50+ years old.
Can you explain how your bottling services work?
We handle all elements of bottling for private and trade clients. Firstly, we help our clients choose their cask if they don’t already have one, and ensure it is ready for bottling through cask sampling. This ensures the ABV and flavour profile match what our clients are looking for.
The next step is customisation – clients can pick from a selection of bottles or decanters (or provide their own). If they don’t have their own brand and label, we can offer a full design service to customise and personalise their style. All bottling and packaging takes place on site in Speyside, and we can get them shipped to anywhere in the world.
Why work with you vs going directly to a supplier or distillery?
Price and flexibility are the main reasons. There is a big difference between buying a cask from a distillery and Cask Trade. A distillery offers a romantic journey; you can go to the distillery and taste, and they will store your cask for 10 years, and then they will bottle it for you. However, only a few distilleries will sell casks to individuals, and their services are often not customisable in any way.
With Cask Trade you have full flexibility to do as you wish - bottle it, sell it, rerack it, all at a market-leading price.
Another reason is choice. There is an enormous amount of choice when buying from a cask stockist like Cask Trade. Over the years, we have sold casks from 125 different distilleries.
Why are you different to other similar businesses?
We are stockists, rather than brokers, which means we own all the casks we sell. A lot of our competitors don’t actually own their stock and are pure brokers. Our list is one of the best in the industry. We have the most competitive prices covering the widest variety of distilleries, ages, and cask types on the market.
What makes us unique is our customer base, where almost 50% of our business is with the trade. We were the first cask company to offer a sustainable marketplace. Another differentiator is that we offer real exits and a full, in-house service.
We are now in our seventh year of business, and we are financially stable, giving our customers the ability to do some due diligence on us.
Also, some companies stipulate a minimum investment that can range from £10,000 to £100,000 – this is something that we don’t do.
Finally, we don’t take any institutional money, don’t run a fund, and we don’t do fractional selling.
What range of customers do you have and from what backgrounds?
Apart from the trade customers, almost all of our private customers are whisky enthusiasts. There is no single type of customer as whisky appeals to so many different people. Men and women of all different ages and professions make up our cask community, which doesn’t differentiate between wealth or geography. We have a truly global customer base and independent bottlers on every continent and corner of the globe.
There is clearly a lot of long-term trust that goes with a business like yours - how do you convince people that you are the right business to work with?
We keep up to date on all the necessary legal requirements – audit/accounting practice, HMRC licenses, etc. We have done that from day one. We make sure that the people who represent the company know their whisky so they can offer genuine advice.
Cask Trade is generally regarded and recognised as the company that knows what they are doing. After that, it’s just reputation and time, and time tells. We have been doing it for a while now and aim to do so for many more years.
What are your thoughts on the rogue operators in the cask ownership world and the impact they are having on the trade?
Simon Aron says it has worked hard at Whisky Cask to ensure the whisky investment market is respected for the great work it does and the services it provides
Because of my experience pre-Cask Trade, I was very much aware of them before a lot of other people. In fact, I even tried to set up a trade association called the Cask Whisky Association (CWA) in 2023.
Unfortunately, we could not recruit enough bona fide members in order to get support from the official bodies that govern the industry. Every industry has rogue players, especially in an unregulated market that involves an alternative luxury product.
When we started, there were five companies in our market, and now there are 50. I hope that the negative players in the market are exposed to the general public rapidly and slowly disappear, leaving the legitimate players to service an amazing marketplace that can be very enjoyable.
For customers what are the Qs they need to be asking to get the right business to work with and the assurances they need?
Buying casks is a passion play for many customers. Because of this, people often don’t do their due diligence when in reality it should be treated like any other alternative investment. These are the top things to consider before you buy:
- Set your budget and time goals.
- Consider building a diversified portfolio (both with whisky casks and your wider portfolio).
- Research or seek advice on current market trends.
- Do your due diligence on the cask company you are considering.
- Price check the casks you are being offered.
- Check if the company you are considering offers cask samples before you buy (indicative) and can sample your cask for you as it ages.
- Does the company offer proven exit options?
Why do you think there is such an interest in owning casks?
I don’t think it comes down to one thing. Cask whisky is a luxury item, and people love luxury items. Every cask is unique, and you get to choose the journey you go on with a cask. This includes picking everything from the flavour to time scales and the exit. It can be part of someone’s life or the next generation.
What have been the biggest stepping stones in Cask Trade's growth?
Since 2018, with three employees in our office on Regent Street, London, there have been many milestones to celebrate.
Over the years, we have been very fortunate to receive recognition from several prestigious business awards, including 21st in the Sunday Times Top 100 in 2023, 24th in the Startups 100 list 2024, and ranking 124th out of the FT1000 Fastest Growing Businesses in Europe 2024.
In 2019, we set up the world’s first online cask auction platform, auctionyourcask.com, and opened our own tasting room overlooking Regent Street.
In 2020, we expanded into three more offices and became 16 staff.
In 2021, we introduced a bottling service to support our trade clients looking to bottle, and we also expanded into the APAC market, opening an office in Hong Kong.
The new Cask Trade warehouse
2025 marked another milestone for Cask Trade as we opened our own warehouse in Forres, Scotland, next door to a bottling facility. It’s an exciting time of growth, and we continue to expand into new markets, including a new consulting office in the Middle East.
What have been the biggest challenges, and how have you overcome them?
The biggest challenge has been the explosion within the sector. We have gone from one of five cask whisky companies in 2018 to one of 50 companies in 2021. The challenging economy post Brexit and Covid has only been compounded by successive government increases in tax and alcohol duty. Added to this, there has been the negative reputation of some bad players in the market. However, we have overcome this by staying the course, listening to customers, and providing services to meet their requirements.
Where do you see the big untapped opportunities for Cask Trade?
I believe the major opportunities are in the globalisation of whisky. There are a lot of whisky lovers living in countries where the product wasn’t previously readily available. Good examples of this are India and China.
People are moving in a big way. Whisky is global, and we have to follow whisky lovers, consumers and drinkers. That’s why when you go to a city like Hanoi in Vietnam or Qingdao in China, you have got whisky bars and whisky shops offering a wide range of products.
What is your international business and how is that growing?
The business in Asia is the fastest-growing part of the business now, whereas it was Europe a few years ago.
Because of the global economic shift, a lot of clients have moved to the Middle East, specifically Dubai, and we hope to continue to service them there.
You have just opened your own warehouse - what will that provide the business and your customers?
The new warehouse allows us to offer an unrivalled service. The new location will enhance the effective management of clients’ whisky, something we have been working to continually improve in 2024. It will allow for delivery orders to be provided for direct, unquestionable ownership in the client’s own account.
From start to finish, our customers will have full visibility of their cask’s journey. They can come and visit the warehouse, make use of the brand new tasting room, sample whisky straight from their cask, and even watch their own single cask being bottled.
Situated in Forres, our warehouse is just 30 minutes from Inverness airport, surrounded by more than 50 world-renowned single malt distilleries and a range of hotels. Our customers are now able to arrange a date and time to visit their cask, sample the liquid, and enjoy the best of “Malt Whisky Country”.
How are you working with The Drinks Trust?
We are proud to support The Drinks Trust by offering a Whisky Masterclass on September 15 as part of Develop — a new, free educational programme designed to deepen whisky knowledge and elevate service standards across the drinks and hospitality industry.
The Drinks Trust is going to be even more relevant and necessary for those working in the hospitality industry in the next few years. Both inside and outside of London, we can see pubs, restaurants, and clubs are closing. A lot of people will be retraining, and if we can give them even an ounce of knowledge in single malt whisky, it’s got to be a bonus. We hope it could help in the way that they talk to customers, as it makes such a big difference. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way.
To learn more and apply for the Develop Whisky Masterclass, visit the application page here.
