12% of Brits Drink Scotch. What Does That Mean for Cask Investing?

6.2 million brits drink scotch whisky. Well, it’s 6,197,000 people; but what’s 3,000 drinkers between friends?

We’re talking about nearly 12% of the adult population who classify themselves as scotch drinkers. That’s a lot of drinkers.

So, a lot of people drink scotch. What does that tell us?

We think it’s interesting to look at how the number of scotch drinkers has changed over time.

Kantar Media. “Number of People Using Scotch Whisky in Great Britain from 2013 to 2019, by User Type (in 1,000s).” Statista, Statista Inc., 9 Jun 2020

So, we can see that 6.2 million people drink scotch whisky. Of those, 1.47 million people were ‘heavy’ Scotch whisky drinkers, 1.59 million people were ‘medium’ drinkers, and 3.15 million were ‘light’ drinkers.

How did the survey define a heavy drinker, you might ask. Good question.

Heavy drinkers consumed Scotch whisky either “10 or more in last week”, “5 to 9 in last week” or “3 or 4 in last week”. Medium drinkers consumed Scotch whisky either “1 or 2 in last week” or “3 or more in last month”. Finally, light drinkers drank Scotch whisky either “1 or 2 in last month”.

Now that we have straightened that out, we see something interesting: the total number seems to have decreased.

The number of whisky drinkers is decreasing?

In 2013 there were 7.5 million scotch drinkers. And now we’re down to 6.2 million. That’s a 17% decrease. So what happened to those 1.3 million people?! Did they drink too much Famous Grouse?

We don’t think so.

We think it tells an exciting story.

More people are heavy scotch drinkers

Remember heavy drinkers drank Scotch whisky either “10 or more in last week”, “5 to 9 in last week” or “3 or 4 in last week”. The number of self-identified heavy whisky drinkers increased by nearly 1 million between 2013 and 2019. So, while the number of medium and light scotch drinkers decreased, the number of heavy drinkers increased by 7%.

3% of adults in the UK are heavy scotch drinkers 

1.47 million people are heavy scotch drinkers. We think that represents a growing opportunity for premium scotch. These are people who reach for a dram every week. And we don’t think they want just any whisky, we believe there is a growing interest and desire to drink premium scotch.

The growing demand from heavy scotch drinkers in the UK presents fantastic investment opportunities.

If you’d like to learn more about investing in whisky, complete this form and we’ll email our Ultimate Guide to Whisky Cask Investment.