One of the most confusing things about the world of single malt Scotch whisky is the proliferation of bottlings of different types. It’s no doubt especially confusing to the whisky newbie, but it can be hard to make sense of for the experienced drinker coming from, say, bourbon, or even for someone with a fair, but not encyclopedic, knowledge of Scotch.

We know that single malt Scotch whisky is a very particular thing: it is produced exclusively from malted barley, can only be made in Scotland, and must be the product of a single distillery. If we’re a little more knowledgeable, we might know that it must be aged for a minimum of three years, that it must have been distilled using traditional copper pot stills, and we might have a general sense of whisky-producing regions of Scotland and the names of various distilleries.

But now you’re standing in your local liquor store looking at the shelves. Some stuff is really easy to recognize and make sense of–everyone knows Glenlivet and Glenfiddich, and both have distinctive, recognizable branding. But what to make of this: here are two bottles that look similar, and both have the words “Signatory Vintage” stamped across the label, but one says, in smaller print “Distilled at Mortlach Distillery” and the other says “Distilled at Teaninich Distillery”. What does that mean? Further, there are a bunch of bottles that look almost identical and are labeled “Shieldaig Single Malt Scotch Whisky”; but a slightly closer inspection shows that one is from the Highlands, one is from Islay, and one is from Speyside. We know that single malt comes from just one distillery–can a distillery be in multiple regions? Or can distilleries in different regions have the same name? What’s going on here?!?!

What’s going on is that–intentionally, or not–your liquor store is giving you a crash course in the byzantine intricacies of different bottlings within the world of single malt Scotch.

Before taking a deeper dive, let’s do a quick rundown of different bottling types and explain what they are–a sort of “tl;dr” that gives you the basic information.  Interested readers can continue beyond to gain additional insight, if they so choose.

Proprietary Bottlings

Also called “Official Bottlings” or “Distillery Bottlings,” proprietary bottlings are created and marketed by the owner of the distillery. The most widely recognized single malts–the widely available Glenfiddichs, Glenlivets, Ardbegs and Macallans of the world–are proprietary bottlings. Most proprietary bottlings have distinct branding (such as Glenfiddich’s unique triangular bottles) that makes them easily recognizable and distinguishes them from other brands. If you live in the United States, especially if you live away from a major coastal urban area, it’s likely that most of the bottles you find on the shelf at your favorite local liquor store will be proprietary.

Independent Bottlings

Independent bottlings, sometimes abbreviated to “indie bottlings” are bottlings created and marketed by a third party firm that almost certainly has no ownership stake in the distillery that produced the whisky in the bottle. As with proprietary bottlings, independent bottlings typically have distinct branding, however, in this case, that branding will likely apply to bottlings from quite a variety of different distilleries. Many independent bottlings are limited or one-off releases, bottled from just a few casks, or even a single cask, although that isn’t universally so. An example of an independent bottling is Hunter Laing’s Old Malt Cask range, which has a consistent color scheme of green, gold and white labels, is almost always bottled at 50% abv, and comes in a distinctive hexagonal box, whether the whisky is from Laphroaig or Linkwood, from Talisker or Tomintoul.

Sourced Bottlings

Sourced bottlings are those that do not explicitly identify the distillery where they were produced–they’re single malts, so they’re the product of a single Scottish distillery but…it’s just not clear which one. The opacity of sourcing is quite variable: sometimes it is quite easy to find out where a sourced whisky was distilled, and other times, it’s nearly impossible. If you’re an American, and you regularly shop at Total Wine, know that somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the single malt they stock is typically sourced–brands like Grangestone, Glen Fohdry, and Shieldaig are all sourced, and the actual provenance is quite difficult to determine. At the other end of the spectrum, if you come across an independent bottling that says “Whitlaw” you can be almost 100% certain that what you’re getting was distilled at the Highland Park distillery on Orkney. Some distilleries keep a very, very tight leash on their branding and won’t allow independent bottlers to actually name them on the bottle unless certain conditions are met.

With the definitions out of the way…If you want my quick and dirty recommendation, learn the names of distilleries, avoid sourced bottlings and buy indie and proprietary bottlings.

If you want to learn a bit more about why the Scotch industry has so many different types of bottlings and get some additional nuance for choosing bottlings, read on.

Current bottling practice has a lot to do with the business side of the Scotch industry, and understanding that requires a brief primer on the history of the industry.

Like most traditional whisky types, Scotch initially developed as a small-scale product mainly intended for local consumption. Most of the whisky made and consumed in the early days would have been, largely by default, single malt, or at least malt-based spirit distilled in traditional copper pot stills at a single distillery.

The advent of industrial scale continuous distilling in the early 19th century was an early step in changing that, since it meant you could distill huge quantities of spirit much more efficiently, the first step to expanding beyond a local market. In the industrialized Scottish Lowlands, distillers increasingly focused on distilling relatively inexpensive grain whisky, which could be produced in bulk quantities relatively cheaply and efficiently, while their Highland counterparts continued to produce traditional malt whisky.

Bottling and blending were two further innovations that changed things. Putting your whisky into bottles rather than selling casks allowed wider scale distribution with consistent branding. Blending allowed producers to mix more flavorful malt whisky with inexpensive grain whisky to create a product that was easier and cheaper to produce in bulk than single malt, of more consistent quality than single malt (at least prior to rigorous wood management) and at the same time more characterful than pure continuous distilled grain whisky.

The advent of blending and mass market blends created a symbiotic relationship between grain whisky distillers, malt whisky distillers, and blenders, and the global success of Scottish blends fueled the growth of malt whisky distilling to provide fillings for blends. 

Creating a consistent blend doesn’t just require grain whisky and malt whisky–it requires a judicious and deft combination of both types, using different casks and vintages from various distilleries to create a harmonious, and again, consistent, blend. Nowadays wood management and rigorous precision in distilling processes mean that whisky production is more consistent than ever before, but that wasn’t always so; in earlier times, you couldn’t necessarily count on similar aged casks being consistent in quality even coming from the same distillery, and you couldn’t count on a distillery reliably producing whisky of a consistent quality. For that reason, the blending industry has traditionally required the ability to switch out components to maintain a consistent product, which in turn means that for almost as long as blending has been a practice, there has been cask trading, sometimes involving third parties.

In the modern whisky industry, many firms do more than one thing. For example, the British liquor giant Diageo owns somewhere in the ballpark of one-third to one-quarter of all currently operating malt distilleries in Scotland. But they also own grain distilleries and many, many prominent blends. They’re in the business of producing both malt and grain whisky, and also creating blends from their expansive portfolio! A lot of what a firm like Diageo produces, they also sell under their own various brands. Some, however, winds up in the hands of third parties, who dispose of it as they see fit, either bottling it themselves, or using it for a blend.

You might wonder why any whisky producer would let their product go out into the world without official imprimatur. There are a variety of reasons. The most salient reason is mitigating risk (it’s extremely difficult to forecast future demand for whisky, so it can be a boon to your current business if you can offload newly filled casks as soon as possible). Another reason is that you might have a deal in place with a rival firm to trade whiskies that you have and they need for whiskies that they have and you need. Remember that the Scotch whisky industry is still mostly driven by big-name blends, so that for big industry players, it’s often more important to ensure the consistency of your blends rather than cultivate single malt brands. Or you might just be looking to dump some inferior casks that won’t pass muster in any of your brands. Maybe you’re even testing the waters to see if a distillery you haven’t promoted before starts getting a word of mouth buzz when someone bottles it.

Whatever the precise reasons in the particular case, over the years a lot of single malt Scotch whisky has ended up being bottled by people other than the producer. The most longstanding practice is independent bottling, a practice initially pioneered by firms like William Cadenhead and Gordon & MacPhail. Cadenhead’s was a vintner and distillery agent based in Aberdeen; Gordon & MacPhail was initially a grocer located in Elgin. Both firms had made a business of marketing single malts from a variety of different distilleries under their own imprimatur by the early 20th century, and both continue to do so to this day, although sadly Gordon & MacPhail does not plan to continue filling new casks going forward. While blends continued to dominate international markets, Cadenhead’s and Gordon & MacPhail plugged away, acquiring casks and independently bottling mature whisky for their local markets.

Over the years, some single malt whisky has always been bottled by its producers and even exported. Brands like Glenlivet and even Laphroaig were at least fitfully bottled by their owners as single malts from the late 19th or early 20th century. But single malts bottled by their producer remained something of a niche product…until 1963.

In 1963, William Grant and Sons, owner of the well-known Grants blend and the Glenfiddich and Balvenie distilleries, became embroiled in a trade dispute with Distiller’s Company Limited (DCL, now Diageo) that left them cut off from the grain whisky necessary to produce their blends. To keep their business alive, Grants did two things: first, they built their own massive grain distillery at Girvan to become less reliant on other firms for their blending needs. Rather more interestingly, they also undertook to market their Glenfiddich whisky as a single malt, becoming the first firm to consistently mass-market single malt whisky as a luxury product. The rest, as they say, is history, and the success of Glenfiddich ushered in the age of widely available and widely marketed single malts bottled by their producer. 

Even with the success of Glenfiddich, it took awhile for single malt to catch on as a mass-market product, and for many years, the only way the curious drinker could get their hands on many single malts continued to be through independent bottlings. But gradually, with some fits and starts along the way, more and more single malts got proprietary bottlings, with the trend accelerating rapidly with the boom in single malt, and brown spirits more generally, in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Nowadays, the distillery that has no official bottling available in at least some markets is the exception rather than the rule, and in fact most distilleries produce a whole range of proprietary bottlings, typically covering multiple ages and so on.

The explosion of single malt as a category, and the widespread perception that it is a higher quality and more “authentic” product than its blended cousins has of course led to an explosion of proprietary bottlings, but also of independent bottlings–recent decades have seen a proliferation of both independent bottling firms, and actual bottlings. The boom has also led to another category: sourced single malts.

Again, a sourced single malt is a single malt that doesn’t identify where it was distilled. In some instances, sourced whiskies are basically independent bottlings that wink heavily at source distillery without explicitly naming it, typically due to branding restrictions imposed by the distiller. Independent bottlings from “Whitlaw” are invariably from Highland Park, those from “Williamson” are invariably from Laphroaig. For a long time, Cadenhead’s bottlings that said they were from “Probably Speyside’s Finest Distillery” were from Glenfarclas, although I don’t know if that is still the case. 

But a lot of sourced whisky is bottled under branding that seems to suggest an actual distillery where none exists, while remaining resolutely silent on its provenance. A good example of this is the Glen Fohdry brand, which is heavily promoted by the US liquor chain Total Wine. There is no Glen Fohdry distillery in all of Scotland (neither is there a Grangestone, or a Shieldaig, nor for that matter, a Port Askaig), but the name could be the name of a distillery, and finding where a given expression of Glen Fodhry is distilled would take some detective work. 

In fact, sourced brands are under no obligation to source consistently from the same distillery. As long as they label their product single malt, it must come from a single distillery, and if they designate a region, it must come from a distillery within that region, but once those requirements are met, it could be from any number of distilleries, and from one distillery one year and another the next. If a region isn’t specified, it could be from literally any distillery in Scotland. 

Of course as with almost anything, there are some weird cases:

The Loch Lomond distillery in the southern Highlands is an omnibus distillery that produces numerous different sorts of whisky, both malt and grain. It is also one of the earlier distilleries to produce a wide variety of different malt whisky styles. Because of that plethora of styles, proprietary bottlings from Loch Lomond traditionally have distinct brand names–regular old Loch Lomond, Inchmurrin, Inchmoan, and Croftengea–depending on their style. 

The Glengyle Distillery in Campbeltown produces a single malt whisky called Kilkerran, rather than Glengyle. That’s because the Glengyle Distillery was moribund for many years, and during its long slumber, the trademark for the name was acquired by another brand. When the distillery was revived, it couldn’t legally be bottled under its own name.

The independent bottling house Signatory owns the Edradour Distillery in the Highlands. There is an official bottling line of Edradour with its own distinct branding, but Signatory also sometimes bottles Edradour under Signatory branding–an independent bottling of a distillery owned by an independent bottler!

Although Gordon & MacPhail recently announced that they would stop filling new casks for their independent bottling business, for many years–and even now–they served as a “semi-official” bottler for a number of distilleries. This led to the renowned “Distillery Labels” range, which uses historic labels from official bottlings of a variety of distilleries not owned by Gordon & MacPhail; for now, there are still whiskies in the range available from a variety of distilleries including Ardmore, Mortlach, Longmorn, and Linkwood.

So…what? What does all of this matter to the consumer? Where does this leave us? Why should you care?

Well, there’s a lot of good whisky out there, but some whiskies are better–more flavorful, more interesting, or more authentic–than others. To get the most out of your hard earned cash, you’re going to want to be selective, and some types of bottling are going to get you a better bang for your buck, depending on what you’re looking for.

If you want my off-the-cuff, quick-and-dirty advice: avoid sourced whisky like the plague, and stick to proprietary and independent bottlings. Personally, I almost never drink, let alone buy, sourced whisky. If you want a little more nuance, read on.

Almost all whisky and whiskey has gotten really expensive in recent years, and that is especially the case with Scottish single malts. If you’re just getting into single malt Scotch, and you’re not sure if you like it at all and you’re on a budget, and you have no idea where to begin, you might want to try some sourced whiskies, just to get an idea of some of the overarching flavor characteristics. And if you’re a casual drinker who doesn’t mind throwing some whisky over ice or even mixing it, you’re probably going to get more value from a sourced whisky than from something more expensive and bespoke. If most of the above doesn’t apply to you, you’re probably going to want to avoid sourced whisky at least 90% of the time.

Why?

For starters, a big reason single malt Scotch is so interesting is that there is interesting and meaningful distillery character. Unless you’re already a god-tier taster who can easily identify distillate from any one of Scotland’s nearly 150 malt distilleries, drinking sourced whisky takes a bite out of the interesting experience of tasting and learning about the make from distinct distilleries.

There’s also a more sentimental or romantic side to appreciating single malt whisky–knowing something about the provenance of a whisky and being able to place spirit alongside a name and a place is part of the fun.

But probably the biggest reasons to avoid sourced single malts have to do with consistency and quality. Because there is no guarantee that a sourced whisky is reliably sourced from the same distillery, there’s no guarantee of consistent quality from a sourced whisky. Sometimes too much is made of “distillery character,” but it is a real thing, and changing where the whisky is sourced will definitely change the character of the whisky in the bottle.

An even bigger issue is simply baseline quality. In most instances of sourcing, economic considerations play a starring role. Sometimes a whisky is cheap because it has been unfairly neglected, but more often than not, a whisky is cheap because it was minimally matured, or aged in low-quality, worn-out casks, or distilled with wider than optimal cut-points. A lot of the whisky that winds up in off-brand sourced bottlings is stuff that blenders passed on, and distillers didn’t want to put their name on. Again, that isn’t necessarily the case, but it is something you need to beware of.

The trickier question is deciding between proprietary and independent bottlings, assuming you have the choice.

Deciding which to buy depends a lot on where you are in your whisky journey, and what you’re hoping to get out of your purchase, in addition to obvious factors like price and availability.

If you’re relatively new to whisky, proprietary bottlings are probably a good way to get your bearings and find out what you do and don’t like. Most of the time, proprietary bottlings serve as a good introduction to a given distillery’s distinct personality and are often curated to highlight distillery character. Also, proprietary bottlings tend to be readily available and about as consistent as is possible over protracted periods.

There are down sides. The most readily available proprietary bottlings tend to be produced by giant multinational firms who treat single malt as something of a lucrative little side hustle, rather than as their raison d’etre. That can mean that you occasionally run up on milder forms of issues that you see with sourced bottlings, such whisky matured in cheaper, and correspondingly worse, casks. More commonly, a lot of proprietary bottlings from the big players are not integrity presentation. Also, proprietary bottlings from popular, well-known distilleries, tend to be a lot more expensive than equivalents from indie bottlers.

So what about indie bottlers?

There are several nice things about them. First, independent bottlers increasingly bottle with integrity presentation, or at least at a minimum of 46% abv. There are a handful of indie releases that don’t check those boxes, but most now do. For whisky connoisseurs, that alone makes independent bottlings an appealing prospect. Also, independent bottlings are also often a relative value proposition, when you consider them vis-a-vis similarly aged proprietary bottlings. Note that that doesn’t always mean they are strictly cheaper, although they’re often that, too, when it comes to high profile distilleries. Finally, independent bottlings often offer a more unique experience–single cask and true small batch releases and/or unusual maturation. 

Of course it’s not all sunshine and roses with indies, either. Integrity presentation is nice, but it doesn’t miraculously make bad or mediocre whisky good. By the same token, “unique” doesn’t necessarily mean good–throw a delicate Lowland whisky in a first fill Pedro Ximenez cask for 20 years, and then bottle the results as a cask-strength single cask offering, and you’re going to produce a “unique” whisky, but it’s going to be cloyingly sweet and more sherry than whisky. And of course when an indie bottler really does catch lightning in a bottle, in a lot of cases it’s an experience that won’t be repeated. That amazing single cask Signatory Teaninich was a one-off, and you’re not going to be able to keep replenishing it down the years, unless you bought multiple bottles when it first released.

Finally, the biggest issue with independent bottlings is that they can be really, really hard to find. Where I live, there are almost no independent bottlings readily available at local liquor stores. The local Total Wine is probably sitting at 30-35% sourced whisky, 55-60% proprietary, and only 5-15% indie (on a good day). The locally owned stores, alas, are typically even worse for indies, although at least they don’t blitz you with sourced whisky. At least I have the option to have whisky shipped. If you don’t live somewhere you can get liquor shipped, your access to indie bottlings will depend entirely on the vagaries of your local liquor distributors. Even if you are able to receive alcohol shipments, even major UK-based retailers typically only carry some independent bottlings, and quite a few are exclusive to particular EU markets. Good luck finding those!

At the end of the day, you should buy what suits your tastes and budget. But assuming you have some knowledge of single malts, you’re probably going to end up with the most rewarding experience splitting your time and money between proprietary and independent bottlings, and avoiding the sourced stuff.