A History of Scotland's Independent Bottlers by David Stirk

What exactly is an independent bottler, and why do they matter? Whisky author and educator David Stirk explores the history, evolution and lasting influence of the companies that have expanded the world's appreciation of Scotch whisky.

On 23 August, 1988, Andrew Symington registered the Signatory Vintage Scotch Whisky Company Limited. As a young entrepreneur, Symington could not have envisioned the enormous impact his new company would have on a burgeoning sector of the whisky industry. Independent bottlers, those firms that are now synonymous with bottling the whiskies of distilleries they do not own, were not a new phenomenon when Symington began, but they were certainly old-fashioned in their methods and very much on the periphery of the industry and the consumer. Before Signatory, independent bottling was primarily available from Gordon & MacPhail of Elgin, which was by far the largest IB, and Wm Cadenhead’s (originally Aberdeen but now Campbeltown), who began to venture into retail with the establishment of a shop on Canongate in the mid ‘70s. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith, a single-cask whisky membership club, had been founded a few years earlier, in 1983, by Philip Hills and some friends. However, I believe it was Signatory and Symington’s contributions, especially in export markets, that truly laid the groundwork for the current state of the independent bottling market.

A photograph of William Cadenhead and Robert Duthie taken roughly between 1885 and 1904 outside The Cadenhead shop in Netherkirkgate, Aberdeen.  Courtesy of Wm Cadenhead Ltd.

The concept of independent bottling is unique to Scotch whisky and came about through the evolution of the industry. Prior to the first Scotch whisky brands that began to appear in the middle of the 19th century - and it is a generally held consensus that Andrew Usher’s O.V.G was the first brand of any real acclaim - whisky was sold fairly young, raw and without restriction to anyone willing to purchase it. Distillers of the era had little interest in creating a brand of their own; rather, they were driven to ensure their distillate was viewed as high quality and could therefore command a slightly higher price than its peers on the open market.
 
The largest Scotch whisky brands to surface from these times were often grocers or stores that would create offerings under their own name. Many of these brands are still available today: Chivas, Johnnie Walker, Bell’s (etc). These were, in essence, the first IBs, and from the outset of industrialisation, the job of the distiller or their ‘traveller’ (salesperson) was to find outlets for their whisky through these blenders and bulk buyers. These IBs were predominantly bottling blends, although late 19th century single malts exist, proving that the precedence of naming the distillery was an established practice. The 1860 Spirits Act greatly accelerated the number of brands available as companies were freed to blend and bottle in bond. Both the number of new corporations and products exploded from the 1870s onwards. 

It is worth noting that being labelled an IB, then and now, does not necessarily mean a firm is physically bottling and labelling the goods themselves. There is a long tradition of corporate bottlers willing to bottle for anyone anywhere, and up until the changes in HMRC regulations from around 2016 onwards, this was the more convenient route to market for any IB. At some point, in recent history, someone labelled these firms ‘armchair bottlers’.
 
To carry on our history, we need to skip forward several decades. Whilst the industry changed beyond recognition due largely to the creation of the Distillers Company Ltd, the 1898 crash and shifting habits due to two World Wars, the nature of how the brands and distillate were sold and traded had not greatly altered. Post-World War II saw a rush of foreign, mainly American, investors buying new distillate and new brokering firms (many had been bought for their stock during WW2 – a trend that would continue into the early 1980s) were established to bridge the gap between these stockholders and blending companies. With any industry that has to forecast future sales, highs and lows of stock availability would inevitably occur. Producers labelled this the ‘seven-year itch’ due to the delay between excess or deficit of production in relation to demand. Investors and brokers were seen as a levelling force, allowing blenders to even out their stock books either buying or selling. This, in turn, enabled anyone to buy parcels of bulk whisky, create their own blends, and sell individual distilleries’ distillate to an ever-growing and curious public.
 
At this time, in the late 1960s and ‘70s, there was little, if any, friction between distillers, brokers, blenders and IBs. All were seen as part of the buying and selling process – and therefore benefiting the industry as a whole. So much so that partnerships were entered into between Gordon & MacPhail and several distilleries. This allowed Gordon & MacPhail to bottle and promote what were later termed ‘Distillery Labels’, allowing the public a taste of a single malt that otherwise would not have been available. These included distilleries such as Glen Grant, Strathisla, Linkwood and Mortlach.

Throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s, there was a very gradual growth in sales and demand for single malt whisky, as the industry remained overwhelmingly concerned with the sales of blended Scotch whisky. For anyone interested, casks of most makes and good ages were readily available. Thus, when Symington began purchasing casks for Signatory, he had access to nearly every distillery, aside from some exceptions like Glenmorangie and Glenfarclas. There was little concern for brand ownership or brand protection as distillers were slow to adapt to the public’s demand for different single malt offerings. 
 
This resulted in the 1980s and ‘90s being a golden period for independent bottlers buying bulk whisky. Prices of casks were the same to blender, bottler or IB regardless of intention, resulting in very affordable older whisky that we can look back on now as being extraordinarily high quality [discussions over wood quality, distillation processes etc can be argued separately]. Whiskies bottled in this period of say 1960s Macallan or Glenlivet, at the time rarely reached £100 a bottle, but can now fetch £10,000+ and in some cases tens of thousands. What were common and sweeping decisions by stock controllers to clear out old parcels of whisky to make space for new distillate not just propelled the IBs but had lasting consequences as marketing departments realised the profit and kudos potential of these old and rare casks.
   
What Symington achieved was to tap into the zeitgeist of a new breed of whisky drinker and offer them exactly what they wanted. Gone was the requirement to blend a homogenous, tried-and-tested product, and in its place was a small batch, unique offering from a single distillery. This simplified, information-rich approach became the standard for future bottlers. The new consumer wanted to know the distillery, year, cask type, abv and any other relevant information to the bottling. This was a model the distillery themselves found hard to replicate.

I began working for Wm Cadenhead’s in 2001, and whilst the IB sector of the industry was established and growing, specialist single malt whisky was still a tough sell to the average whisky consumer. Just a few years before this, in the mid 1990s Diageo had released the Rare Malts series, which was very much aimed at the new malt whisky drinker. Initially, the series was not a glowing success, and I can recall Oddbins selling a large swathe of the collection for less than £70/bottle. Consider that these now fetch from the mid-hundreds to five figures for the most sought-after expressions. Interesting to note that when Diageo revisited this range in the Managers’ Choice series in 2009, their pricing system jumped the other way and the consumer took several years to adjust to some of this overpricing.

Image courtesy of Jeffrey St Whisky & Tobacco

All of these releases and the plethora of previously unobtainable malts meant that the industry was catching up with and, inevitably, finding friction with the IB sector. It was clear to any sales rep, brand ambassador, or distillery employee who stepped inside a whisky or spirits shop that IBs were expanding the Scotch whisky section. They could also not fail to notice that consumers were changing habits and seeking out single malt offerings. Terms such as ‘cask strength’, ‘un’ or ‘non-chill filtered’, ‘single cask’ and ‘natural colour’ were now de rigueur for bottler and consumer. The consumer believed in these bottlings as a ‘true’ expression from a distillery – rather than what a blender wanted a consumer to taste. 
 
From Signatory’s lead, the industry exploded. Douglas Laing, Vintage Malt Whisky Company, Ian Macleod and several others followed and before long, more than a dozen additional IBs had been created. As supply, mostly through brokers and private cask owners, dwindled in the early 2010s, many IBs – well, those that could afford to - turned to distilling to ensure future business opportunities. In the last six to eight years, the supply of bulk whisky has become much greater, and it is safe to suggest that there are more independent bottlers now than there have ever been. For the consumer, there has never been a greater choice.