About us
Unconditional love for whisky — for the drink, for the history and for the culture around it. European Whisky Auctions exists because two people could not stop looking for old bottles and decided the search ought to be easier for everybody else as well.
Everything here is built and run by the same small team in Groningen: the software, the warehouse, the photography, the answers to your e-mails. There is no head office elsewhere and nobody else to refer you to.
Founded in Groningen
Dutch, and independent
Started by two collectors
Martin and Jelger
Built by the people who run it
Not bought off a shelf
For the bottles from before
The sixties and seventies
100% of Dutch origin
European Whisky Auctions was founded by two whisky enthusiasts with one aim: bringing whisky lovers from all over the world together around the bottles they are looking for.
Martin and Jelger are two down-to-earth entrepreneurs from the north of the Netherlands with years behind them in IT and web development. From that background, and a considerable love for whisky, building their own auction was a logical enough step — and, above all, a wish they had been carrying around for a long time.
It shows in how the place works. The bidding platform, the catalogue, the storage system and the member accounts were all written in-house rather than licensed from somebody else, which means that when something needs to change we change it, usually the same week.
It also means the person who answers your question about a fill level is very often the person who photographed the bottle. We are small enough that this is still true, and we intend to stay that way.
Why old whisky
Not old in age — old as in distilled decades back. Whisky from the sixties and seventies, which is often barely comparable with what comes off a still today.
If you have tasted one, you know exactly what we mean, and no amount of writing about it here will add anything. Different barley, different kilns, different casks, different pace — the result is a kind of whisky that simply is not made any more, and cannot be.
That whisky is harder to find every year. A pity, but also entirely understandable: with every bottle that gets opened there is one fewer left, and the ones being opened are the good ones. Nobody is saving a bottle for a rainy day that never comes.
With European Whisky Auctions we want to make the search for that one bottle easier — to put the bottles and the people who want them in the same room twelve times a year, describe honestly what is in front of us, and get out of the way.
That is the whole business plan, really. Everything else on this website is machinery in service of it.
A short film about who we are and what happens in the warehouse. It is in Dutch — we never got round to subtitling it, and there is a certain honesty in that.
Much more than auctioneers, we are allies on your journey through the beautiful world of whisky, looking for that one very special bottle.
What that means in practice
Every auction house says it is honest and cares about the whisky. These are the four things we do about it that you can go and verify on this website before you ever give us a penny.
Two photographs of every bottle as standard, front and back, taken under our own lights rather than in somebody's kitchen. A worn customs seal gets its own photograph. So does every bit of damage we can see.
The magnifier on the lot page is there so you can look for yourself rather than take our word for it. A tired label described as tired sells perfectly well; a tired label described as mint comes back.
Ask us for a valuation and you get an honest one, including the times when the honest answer is that the bottle will not make back the listing fee. We would rather say so than take the fee and let you find out.
It costs us a listing and earns us somebody who asks again next year with something better. That trade has worked out well for a decade.
One commission for buyers, one fee per bottle for sellers, and a short list of things you can choose to use. No subscription, no premium tier, no line that turns up at checkout having never been mentioned.
That page is generated from the same settings our invoices are calculated with, so it cannot quietly fall out of date while nobody is looking.
Every lot passes through our own warehouse. We collect them, unpack them, check them, photograph them, store them upright in the dark and pack them again when they leave. Nothing is drop-shipped from a seller's garage.
It is slower and it costs more than the alternative. It is also the only way to know that what is in the catalogue is what is in the box.
Where to find us
Everything you see on this website happens in one building on the Stavangerweg in Groningen. The photography, the storage, the packing and the e-mails all come from the same address.
You are welcome to come by. Do let us know beforehand if you want to drop off bottles or collect a purchase, because whoever is holding the camera that morning may otherwise be the only person in the building.
E-mail reaches all of us and is usually the quickest way to a real answer.
There are no walk-in hours. Collecting bottles you have won, bringing in bottles of your own, or simply coming to see the place: all of it is arranged beforehand.
Most of the day the team is up a rack, behind a camera or out on a collection route. An appointment is what makes sure somebody is free for you.
One e-mail or one phone call is enough. Tell us roughly when suits you and what you are coming for, and we will confirm a day and a time.
If you are bringing bottles in, say how many, and the coffee will be waiting alongside the space to put them down.
