Whisky glossary
The vocabulary of cask ownership.
A plain-English glossary of the terms you’ll encounter when acquiring, owning and selling whisky casks.
- Angel’s share
- The portion of spirit lost to natural evaporation during maturation. It gradually reduces the volume of liquid in a cask over time.
- Beneficial owner
- The true owner and beneficiary of a cask and its contents, as distinct from the party that merely stores or registers it.
- Bonded warehouse
- A secure, HMRC-supervised facility where spirit is stored under duty suspension while it matures.
- Bottle yield
- The realistic number of bottles a cask will produce at a sensible bottling strength, based on remaining volume and strength.
- Cask number
- A unique identifier assigned to an individual cask, used to tie ownership to a specific asset.
- Delivery Order
- A document used in bonded warehousing to record and instruct the transfer of ownership of goods held in bond.
- Duty suspension
- The arrangement under which duty and VAT are not paid while spirit remains stored in a bonded warehouse.
- Hogshead
- A common cask size of roughly 250 litres, often assembled from re-coopered bourbon barrels.
- Independent bottler
- A company that buys casks to bottle and sell whisky under its own label, rather than the original distillery’s.
- New-fill
- A freshly filled cask of newly distilled spirit, typically acquired at an earlier price and held for maturity.
- Regauging
- A formal measurement of a cask’s remaining volume and alcohol strength, useful for valuation and sale.
- Sherry butt
- A large cask of roughly 500 litres, previously used to mature sherry, imparting distinctive character.
- Six-cask pallet
- A group of six casks acquired together, often analysed as a unit for yield, wholesale value and bottler demand.
- Strength (ABV)
- The alcohol by volume of the spirit in a cask. It declines gradually during maturation and affects bottling viability.
- Warehouse account
- The account under which a cask is held and recorded at a warehouse — which, where available, can be the client’s own.
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