WHISKY has climbed straight to the top of this year’s Luxury Investment Index with 40% annual growth.

Each year global estate agency Knight Frank publishes its Wealth Report, revealing which assets have increased most in value and which haven’t done so well.

Knight Frank Rare Whisky 100 Index, featured for the first time in the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index and compiled by Rare Whisky 101, contains 100 bottles of the world’s most desirable rare Scotch whisky. The index tracks actual UK auction prices of these bottles, finding that over the past 10 years values have increased by almost 600%.

The most significant sale of 2018 was a unique bottle of Macallan 1926, hand painted by Irish artist Michael Dillon, that sold for a record-breaking £1.2 million in November. This rise in values has been partially driven by the Asian market, as sales of Scotch whisky to India, China and Singapore rose by 44%, 35% and 24% respectively in the first half of 2018 according to the Scotch Whisky Association, with single malts totalling almost 30% of total exports.

Andy Simpson of Rare Whisky 101 said: “While rare whisky remains a somewhat fledgling asset class compared to some other passion investments, the market for rare and vintage bottles has witnessed extraordinary growth over the past ten years, both in terms of the volume of whisky being traded and the value of that whisky.”