You can present whisky without distillation
An independent bottler is a business that purchases casks or liquor from a distillery or liquor owner, selects, further matures, blends, and bottles it, then sells it under its own brand. Unlike Official Bottling, which a distillery puts out as part of its regular line-up, it can showcase different casks and maturation conditions from the same distillery.
‘Independent bottling’ is not the sixth statutory type of Scotch whisky. The whisky in the bottle must still follow the correct sales name (Single Malt, Single Grain, Blended Malt, Blended Grain or Blended Scotch) and all production and labeling regulations.
How is it different from official bottling?
| Category | Distillery Official Bottling | Independent Bottling |
|---|---|---|
| Planning entity | Distillery or Brand Owner | Bottling company/merchant separate from distillery |
| General Goals | Brand-specific style and batch-to-batch consistency | The individuality of specific casks, vintages, and experimental maturation |
| Configuration | Often combining multiple casks | Ranging from single cask to multiple cask combinations |
| Bottling strength | Regular strength or cask strength | Regular strength or cask strength |
| quality | Varies by product | Varies by product |
Independent bottling is not always stronger or better. Although it has the advantage of being able to find rare casks, cask variation can be significant, and some products have little information or cannot display the distillery name.
Why is there no distillery name?
Independent bottlers may not be able to use the distillery name on the front, depending on the spirit supply agreement and trademark usage terms. In this case, the region, distillation year, cask type or a separate pseudonym may be used. The absence of a name alone does not determine quality or authenticity; legal sales name, bottler, country of origin, alcohol and cask information must also be checked.
Items to check on the label
- Legal sales name and country of origin of Scotch whisky
- Year of distillation, year of bottling, and number of years indicated.
- Cask number and number of bottles: If written, this is a clue to determine whether it is a single cask or not.
- Alcohol strength and volume
- Bottler and place of bottling
- Additional production information such as
Natural Colour,Non-Chill Filtered,Cask Strength
Single cask means it was bottled from one cask and does not automatically guarantee a higher quality grade. It is safer to check the cask strength along with the product batch and bottling description.