Kinsale Spirit Company goes to market with the first ever Whiskey Cask represented by an NFT (A non-fungible token) and auctioned on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. The 200-litre cask of 2001 double distilled Cooley Single Malt Irish Whiskey. The auction itself is is live until Friday, April 30th through the link here.
The blockchain powered platform allows the viewers and future bidders to see full traceability from when it was entered into auction. Speaking on the project, Co-Owner of Kinsale Spirit Company, Ernest Cantillon says;
“I’ve been a keen observer on the sidelines of the NFT world for a long time and always wanted an opportunity to get involved. I thought that combining the rapidly evolving world of blockchain to such a traditional business as whiskey would be fun – such a juxtaposition. When this whiskey was laid down nearly 20 years ago, it would have been hard to even imagine the whole world of NFTs and cryptocurrencies.”
Kinsale Spirit Company plans on integrating these digital auctions into their offering combining digital and physical. While opening up new channels of whiskey aficionados and avid NFT collectors and crypto currency enthusiasts.
This concept of whiskey based NFT trading might sound familiar as just less than one month ago, Bono’s future distillery project, Monasterevin Distillery announced that they would be the first enterprise in Ireland to mark the ownership of a product, but it appears they were pipped at the post. (I say post but the Monasterevin Distillery isn’t in production yet, so a figurative ‘post’ to be pipped at, at best).
The arrival of this cask on the NFT marketplace sees what is likely to be a new beginning in the future possibilities of cask ownership and trading. NFT records the ownership of unique digital assets, through public blockchain based certification. Kinsale Spirit Company have listed the starting minimum bid of $10,000 USDC (a digital US Dollar ‘Stablecoin’ that is tied in parity/1:1 basis to the USD). The reserve price has not been met at the opening list minimum bid, and the auction is set to close on the 30th of April 2021, at 11.54pm IST.
I for one will be keeping a very keen on the first Irish whiskey to go under the crypto hammer. Congratulations to Ernest Cantillon, Tom O’Riordan, Colin Ross and the whole Kinsale Spirit Team.
Leave a Reply