The whisky industry seems to prefer tradition to pushing boundaries. Mainstream whiskies are reliable, flavours are constant, surprises are not on the menu. Buyers clearly want the reassurance of knowing that Macallan 18 will always be there and that their next bottle will taste the same as the last one they bought.
Yet the industry does have a group of producers who provide the opposite of this continuity, taking advantage of their small size and their lack of legacy to offer excitement and innovation rather than Big Brand consistency.
They are the independent bottlers, a growing band of dedicated flavour seekers who typically take one cask at a time from the original distillers, or at most a small parcel of casks, then release perhaps a few hundred bottles of something which has never been tasted before and never will be again.
The Appeal of Independent Bottlings
Whilst the large distillers are tied to replicating a flavour and character that may have persisted for decades, these smaller producers supply the opposite. Their products ask ‘what if’, they create one-of-a-kind drams, a fleeting glimpse of what happens when a spirit is paired with a certain cask in an experiment that can never, ever be repeated.
We’re lucky to have these guys in our industry – these are secondary creators who are carefully choosing each cask, either to amp it up or simply to present great examples of distillates. If you love a certain whisky, then you may just find a limited edition version of your favourite drams, curated and released by a bottler with great loving care and attention.
Independent Approaches
Each of these companies has its own approach to how much they add to the whiskies they issue. Sometimes, bottlers are on a mission to present spirits in different ways.
At Goldfinch Whisky, Andrew Macdonald Bennett aims to ‘shape and elevate the spirit’ from any one of 100 distilleries he has access to. An example of this shaping is the Blair Athol, which the company has aged separately in Marsala, Port, French wine, and German sweet wine casks. When bottled at the same ABV, they provide an insight into how that distillate works with different cask finishes.
By contrast, The Heart Cut, a London-based bottling company, doesn’t re-rack or finish the casks. Rather, they partner with distilleries and select casks that they think are extraordinary examples of the distiller’s art.
Georgie Bell describes their approach: “Each Independent Bottler has their own ‘mark’ – and our meticulous cask picking, distillery partnerships and bottling strength, along with the way we talk about each bottle – is ours”.
Releases are coordinated with the distillery; they approve labels and take part in tastings. The process raises the profile of the distillery and educates the buyer, if that’s what they want.
Andrew Smith at Little Brown Dog believes that indies like them are an important part of the industry, catering to the greater whisky world, talking to “a smaller but hugely engaged, informed and passionate audience”.
Providing interesting, unique, and exciting whiskies for this cohort is their reason for being. “Before Little Brown Dog was a company, it was just about sharing whiskies and cask samples with friends and saying ‘hey, this is good, you should try it!’. This hasn’t changed at all, it’s just the samples got bigger”.
Whisky For A New Wave of Drinkers
Beyond the products, what do these small bottling companies aim to provide to the whisky world? Possibly these new products, packaged in non-traditional ways, untap new markets, speaking more to the female whisky drinker or to the youth market.
Whether the greater industry, particularly the PLCs, will ever take the lead from the plucky independent experimenters is up for debate. 130 million bottles of Johnnie Walker sold each year tells us that there is a huge global demand for the familiarity of standard traditional scotch. But those who are looking for something unique, perhaps even a little bit educational, will find it from these producers.
Fife Independent Bottlers supply twin bottlings showcasing the same Highland Park spirit in a fairly standard Oloroso and a very obscure Mourvedre finish (no, me neither). Sampling both of these non-identical twins is a way to widen one’s knowledge of Highland Park in a way that the distillery may never have the inclination to bring to market.
Dram Mor, the bottling company run by master whisky presenter Kenny Macdonald, is happy to add to the variety of the scene. Kenny sees his job as the opposite of just producing the same old, same old.
Bottling companies can take risks with the spirit that the original distillers can’t, yet their work is enthusiastically received by the makers of the spirit: “We have had superb feedback from some of the distilleries, with tasting notes by Master Blenders indicating that they would like to follow the lead that we have set”.
The Independent Bottlers Turned Distillers
Becoming a bottler is a comparatively low-cost way of becoming a producer without the multi-million pound expense and long gestation of spirit production. Bottlers can concentrate on just one part of the whisky production process: the selection and finishing. Their products are diverse by their nature in contrast to a distillery, which is tied down by its process and its terroir.
Not every independent bottler aims to create its own spirit, but some traditional bottling companies have taken that route. Gordon Macphail is the granddaddy of all bottlers; they have been maturing spirits in their own styles since 1895, using their own casks to mature and create whiskies that could be quite different from the original. Sometimes their aged casks have even been called on to re-stock the original distilleries.
Eventually, the lure of making their own spirit drew GM into distilling with the purchase of Benromach Distillery in 1993, and then they built the Cairn Distillery in Granton in 2022. Adelphi trod the same path as a smaller bottler, opening its own distillery in Ardnamurchan in 2014.
Innovation On An Independent Scale
In a world that is constantly evolving, some bottlers have stepped up the innovation a notch, with some really imaginative products treading new paths.
Woven Whisky claimed a world first earlier this year with its first fully English blend, Pastures New. It’s a perfect statement of intent, really, an emerging whisky nation celebrated by a bottler that is pushing many of the traditionally accepted norms.
Bottled in dumpy, dark brown medicine bottles, Woven’s whisky is unlike any other on the market, breaking another of the industry tropes. This is not your grandfather’s whisky.
A New Era For Whisky
These nimble companies are releasing products that should delight any whisky lover who is in search of something different. They’re often cost effective ways to sample some of the best products of the industry.
Kenny Macdonald sums it up: “Having a greater spread of options on the table is massively important, we can showcase something they may have drunk for years, but in a completely different way, keeping whisky fun I hope!”
Read the full article at Whisky Without Limits: How Independent Bottlers Are Rewriting Whisky’s Future
