commerce
Independent bottler
A company that buys matured whisky from distilleries — in cask, in bulk or through brokers — and bottles it under its own brand, sometimes naming the distillery of origin and sometimes using a coded name.
Not a legal term
No whisky regulation in Scotland, Ireland, the United States, the EU or Japan defines this. It is a trade or marketing term, so it is only actionable if its use is actively misleading.
Worth knowing
Distillery names are protected in Scotch: a Schedule 1 distillery name may only be used as part of a brand name if the whisky was wholly distilled there (reg. 9(1)). This is why independent bottlings often carry regional euphemisms, and why a tiny addition of another distillery's malt — 'teaspooning' — converts a single malt into a blended malt and lawfully defeats the name restriction.
Related terms
Last reviewed 2026-07-30 · All glossary terms