Quickstart: how to buy whisky

Our auctions are held on a monthly basis. The auction opens on Friday evening 20:00 CET and closes on Sunday evening the next week from 20:00 CET, so it will run for 9 days. On this page you will learn all about bidding in our auctions.
Step 1

Register account

Of course you must have an European Whisky Auctions account before you can bid on lots. Registration costs € 5,00 (including VAT) to authenticate users and avoid illegitimate bidding. The registration fee is a one-off, non-refundable fee.

By creating an account you automatically agree to our terms of use (for buyers). When you create your account, we will also ask you to confirm your e-mail address.

Step 2

Find your lots

As said before, our auctions are based on a monthly basis. Below you will find our next auction. All our registered users receive an e-mail when the auction is about to open.

  1. March 2024

    March 22nd - March 31st
    Last bottle drop off: Friday 15th March.

We have built in several tools to help you quickly find your favourite bottle. In the lot overview you can sort by name, price and number of bids.

In addition, you can filter on all kinds of relevant characteristics such as the name of the distillery, bottler, year of distillation, age, etc. Anything missing? Let us know and we will see if we can implement it for you and others.

Have you found the whisky of your dreams? All the characteristics are correct? Then it's time for a close inspection! We have put together a few tips to get you started .

Step 3

Place your bid

We have made bidding as easy as possible. Basically, you enter your bid and click on the submit button. Then in the background many things happen. We check whether your bid is sufficient, whether it matches the minimum increment and whether another (automatic) bid has priority.

If everything went well, you will see immediately if you have the highest bid. A higher bid is placed later? Bad luck... But of course we will make sure that you will hear this as soon as possible. We will notify you by e-mail. You can then place a new bid if you wish.

Sometimes you have to act quickly in order not to miss the boat at the last moment. It is therefore important that you understand the anatomy of the bid column. There you will find information about the current bid, the reserve price, the minimum increment and other information. And of course the possibility to place a bid.

Another thing you should know about bidding is that it can be done in two ways. First, you can place a direct bid. If the bid is valid, it will be added to the lot immediately. You can also choose to let our system bid for you. We call that autobidding. You then enter a maximum bid and our system will bid based on the bidding steps until your maximum bid is reached. If you are outbid, we will automatically notify you by e-mail.

Step 4

Payment

Have you received an invoice from us? Congratulations! That means you had the highest bid and won the bottle.

We will notify you by e-mail. Follow the link in your e-mail to process your order. A buyers fee of 10% is added to the hammer price of all lots within your order.

You can pay using various payment methods: bank transfers, iDEAL (Dutch customers only), Bancontact (Belgian customers only), a regular Bank Transfer and all major credit cards. Currently, we do not accept American Express. A surcharge of 3.5% applies to creditcard payments from users outside the European Union.

Step 5

Enjoy your whisky!

Once we have received your payment, we will inform the seller that the package can be shipped. Usually this has to be done within three days after we have informed the seller.

The seller will post a track & trace code in the bottle tracker. There you can follow the package and ask the buyer questions if necessary. After receiving the package, you can indicate in the bottle tracker that everything went well (within 3 days). We will then pay the seller.

Finally, enjoy your dram!

Do you have any questions left? Please don't forget to checkout our
frequently asked questions on buying whisky.