Reading a Whisky Label

A whisky label is a short, dense document. Once you know what to look for, it tells you where the whisky was made, how, and sometimes exactly which cask it came from.

The essentials

• Distillery or brand — sometimes the same thing, sometimes not. A blend is named for its brand; a single malt usually for its distillery.
• Category — single malt, blended malt, blended Scotch and so on (see The styles of whisky).
• Age statement — the youngest whisky in the bottle (more).
• ABV — bottling strength (more).
• Volume — 70cl is standard in the UK and EU; the US traditionally used 750ml and has allowed 700ml since 2021.

The details enthusiasts look for

• Cask type — "matured in ex-bourbon", "oloroso sherry finish", "first-fill".
• Single cask — bottled from one individual cask, often with a cask number, bottle number and the number of bottles filled.
• Distilled / bottled dates — together they tell you the true age of a vintage bottling.
• Non-chill filtered — not chilled and filtered to remove the compounds that can cause haze when cold.
• Natural colour — no E150a caramel added.
• Batch — small-batch releases often number their batches (Laphroaig 10 Cask Strength, Aberlour A'bunadh).

Independent bottlers

Independent bottlers buy casks from distilleries and bottle them under their own labels, often at cask strength and without colouring. Names to know include Gordon & MacPhail, Signatory, Cadenhead's, Douglas Laing and Adelphi. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society uses codes instead of names: in 29.300 the first number is the distillery (29 is Laphroaig) and the second is the cask.

Some casks are sold without the distillery's name — "An Islay Distillery", or a playful nickname. Blended malts are sometimes "teaspooned" (a drop of another malt added) so they can't be sold as a named single malt.

Reading the small print

"Distilled in Scotland" and "bottled in Scotland" should both be there for Scotch — since 2012 single malt Scotch must be bottled in Scotland. Words like "reserve", "select" or "rare" have no legal meaning; age, strength and cask do.