Here is a bit of second-hand reportage. There is a friend of mine who, unlike me, finds it easy to get along with almost anyone he meets. Everyone from authors and filmmakers to restauranteurs and startup founders opens up to him. The other day, he met an investment banker and asked him: “If you had a million dollars to invest today, where would you put it?”
Without missing a beat, the investment banker replied: “In whisky barrels.”
Naturally, when the friend told me this, I rushed to Google’s AI (artificial intelligence) mode, the one entity that readily opens up to me. The results show whisky barrels, or casks, to be not only a legitimate vehicle of investment but also a fascinating one.
To begin with, the value of whisky increases with age, as it matures. But the way the casks are stored is in itself a story, with a defining aspect being how much of the precious commodity gets exposed to air for how long. That determines whether the casks are kept vertical or horizontal.
The warehouses are usually low-slung, with thick walls made of stones or bricks, earthen floors, and slate or wooden roofs. In some cases, the casks are stored under the sea or freshwater lakes for up to a year. There is also ship-aged whisky, which, as the name suggests, is stored on cargo ships.
Interestingly, the investment banker would park his money in whisky even though Gen Z, usually taken to be the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, is widely believed to be the most sober generation ever, drinking less alcohol than the preceding lot of millennials and Gen X. However, the banker believes Gen Alpha will drink more. It is a prognosis Google’s AI mode does not agree with, because, it says, Gen Alpha, growing up at a time when drinking-centred events are less frequent, is likely to continue the pattern of consuming less.
No matter, whisky investors are not the only ones thinking of the next gen when parking their money. The surge of luxury homes, which has been fuelling the boom in real estate after the Covid-19 pandemic, is believed to be about homes that would last generations. As Samar Srivastava reports, people realised after Covid that a home was as much about having a roof over one’s head as about psychological safety and creating generational wealth.
Unsurprisingly, luxury homes are not only about building them but also about maintaining them, so they hold their value. This means monthly maintenance charges can be nearly as high as the rent of a well-appointed middle-class apartment, but the buyers in the luxury segment do not let such things perturb them. One of the buyers in our story, when he found a 10,000 sq ft home “too small”, simply bought an additional floor.
You would have got the idea that we are speaking about large sums here. And one way of making sure those sums are in good hands is to choose the right builder. We have had instances where luxury residential projects with sky-high ambition went sideways. And that is why we bring you a list of the best luxury home builders in the country. With Knight Frank, our knowledge partner, we define what luxury means in the context of India’s real estate sector keeping in mind assets that build long-term family wealth.
To tell you the truth, if you have a million dollars today and want to buy a luxury home in Gurugram or Worli, you will need to scrape together some more. But if you can’t, there is always whisky for comfort.
Suveen SinhaEditor, Forbes IndiaEmail: suveen.sinha@nw18.comX ID: @suveensinha
First Published: Oct 01, 2025, 11:35
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