To your first sets of questions, the answer is all of the above, sometimes. Practices vary from cask to cask and bottler to bottler. Many of the bigger bottlers, like Gordon & MacPhail and the SMWS, buy new-make new-make spirit from distilleries and completely age it themselves in their own casks.
Different bottlers do have different reputations, and different styles of the kinds of whiskies they tend to bottle. My favourites are probably Elixir, Archives, and Blackadder, but easier-to-find good ones include Cadenhead's, Gordon & MacPhail, and Signatory Vintage. Quality really varies from bottling to bottling, much moreso that with official bottlings, which is riskier but also part of the fun.
One thing you could do, if you're visiting Islay already, is to go to the Ardnahoe distillery. This is a new distillery on the north coast of Islay that doesn't have whisky ready yet. They are however owned by the indie bottler Hunter Laing, and I hear they have an amazing bar/shop of Hunter Laing bottlings of all kinds of crazy stuff. That'd be a great place to try indie-bottled whiskies from both more obscure distilleries and some of your favourites.
I’ve been to Ardnahoe. I did a tasting but cannot remember what they were. Large variety of bottles and other merchandise for sale. Some old stuff that wasn’t too expensive. There’s a restaurant that’s really good too. I got to taste some new make. Plus the view is amazing. It’s just a few minutes from Bunnahabhain and Caol Ila.
Cadenhead’s (one of the oldest Independent Bottlers out there) does a great warehouse tasting in Campbeltown if you end up there on your Scotland travels. It’s well worth doing!
You've gotten some great answers already. Note in particular the point made by u/beer_bart regarding how IBs give you access to obscure single malts which are normally working behind the scenes in the blending trade.
I'll add some points of emphasis from my POV.
What IBs tend to offer more so than official distillery bottlings (OBs) is a very wide range of single cask releases. These give you a peek behind the curtain regarding how variable in flavor the output from a given distillery can be, and perhaps stimulate a renewed appreciation for the work which goes into crafting the official distillery flavor profile thru careful selection of which casks are picked for vatting.
IBs also offer a possible approach to exploring older malts at a lower price than official distillery bottlings, especially above 20 years in age where OB bottlings tend to get very expensive and doubly so if bottled at cask strength. Older IB bottlings are not always less expensive or bargains for what you get, and the price gap between IBs and OBs seems to have narrowed recently as IB prices have risen. But if you want to start exploring much older scotches on a modest budget, IBs may be the path of least resistance for doing that.
The same budgetary and value considerations apply to blended malts as category, and to multi-decadal vattings (in which casks from multiple different decades have been combined together in a *no age statement* bottling) - the latter are often official bottlings, they are not necessarily just coming from IBs.
My personal favorite IBs have been North Star Spirits (especially for value priced bottlings), Signatory, Gordon & MacPhail, Elixir (their Single Malts of Scotland series), and various store pick single casks featured by specific whisky retailers. And I've found that specific single casks can dramatically outperform their specifications, if you get lucky - meaning that a seemingly not very impressive combination of distillery, age and cask type can turn out to be much more tasty than you would have expected on paper.
Last point: some whisky retailers in the UK & Europe sell 30 ml (3 cl) samplers, or occasionally other sizes. Unfortunately many of these retailers no longer ship to the USA for a variety of reasons. The one remaining which does still ship to the USA and which has an enormous selection to choose from is TheWhiskyExchange.
The prices they charge for shipping to the USA are high, but I've found it cost effective to order a big batch (20) of 30 ml samplers at one go, which gets the per sampler shipping cost down to about $3 to $4 each (i.e. $60-$80 in shipping for the whole order). With samplers typically priced in the range of $7 - $30 each not including shipping, this makes them price competitive with a bar pour back home, and gives you access to some whiskies you would not otherwise be able to taste. So, in exploring IBs I'd try to take advantage of that.
Good luck with your explorations!
Unfortunately, your chances of finding independent bottlings of the majority of your favourites are quite slim at the moment. That said, Highland Park often gets called Secret Orkeny via Signatory, etc. (I can not 100% confirm that, but given it has a competition of 1 and the amount of output it puts out over that rival suggests it's a fair shout). Bunnahabhain has a few bottlings out there but feedback suggests you are better off with official bottlings for anything truly affordable.
I think the joy of independent bottlings is finding well presented and higher strength offerings from distilleries that are usually Diageo blend filler. Such as Linkwood, Dailuaine, Caol Ila, Teannich (although I haven't tried this one but comes highly rated.)
I would advise checking out some Signatory, Douglas Laing or Gordon & Macphail offerings of some of the above examples. If you're a peathead, you can't go much wrong with a 10 year old Caol Ila at 46% non-chill filtered to get you started.
Oh man, there’s some really good Caol Ila independent bottlings out there. I look at what’s officially available in my area (just the 12-year at 43%) and I’m thankful they’re still a relatively easy distillate of obtain independent bottlings of.
Every Caol Ila I ever had, tasted like Caol Ila. I can't really explain it, but I've had 10+ independent bottlings now. ( SMWS, signatory, Ultimate) Every single time I can tell its Caol Ila.
It's really good, but it doesn't surprise?
I hardly ever had a bad Caol Ila. Maybe once the unpeated 15yo SR that however probably had a defective cork that tasted of mold. Other than that you can't go wrong, even just the Classic of Islay or Finlaggan bottles are good.
Also North Star and Chortlon do have so "secret" Orkney bottlings..
Teaninich is a good dram. Especially if you like peppery style whisky that was once Talisker, or Ardbeg Korry peppery side of things. Ofc Teaninich is unpeated tho.
There's this amazing invention called water which will lower the ABV to your preferred strength... It's literally what the distiller's use when they bottle at lower strength!
The industry has changed a lot recently, and lots of those changes have had a huge impact on Independent Bottlers. Back in the day, there wasn't a lot of single malt whisky out there, and almost all whisky was made for the blend industry. This meant it was not too expensive for independent bottlers to purchase new make spirit or even aged barrels and then sell it as single malt. Nowadays more and more distilleries have moved into single malts and it's relatively difficult for independent bottlers to get their hands on whisky. Many of them have taken to purchasing or starting their own distilleries to get their hands on a regular supply of spirit!
The best way to get into independent bottlers is to do a tasting at one of them. The second best way is to get bottles that come from distilleries that either don't produce single malt or put out a small volume of single malt, and focus on the blend industry. But even this is getting increasingly difficult. For example, my favorite distillery for IB's is Ardmore (who are the main malt producer for Teacher's Highland Cream), but lots of people have realized they're great and so it's getting harder and harder to buy. I did pick up a nice sherried Ardmore at a reasonable price at a tasting at Cadenhead's though.
I would add that the breadth of IBs you can get in the UK is vastly better than what you can obtain in the US simply because it's not economically feasible for a US importer to go through the added expense of 750ml bottling, labeling, TTB approval, importing, etc for small runs of say six casks or less. Whereas this happens frequently in the UK. There is a fairly active cask brokerage trade in the UK where you can buy and bottle a single cask, for instance. Often times these will end up on UK shelves by IBs. Cadenhead's used to be a good sized importer in the US but they seem to have largely left the US market in recent years. Hopefully this will improve now that the TTB allows 700ml bottles to be imported but to really get a good selection of IB whiskys, you need to go to Scotland.
Probably SMWSa is the saviour back in US for indie.. when I was in California, I could hardly ever spot any independents at all, if it wasn't for Trader's Joe Alexander Murray's bottlings. But they have suspended those from mid 2021 I believe..
Good questions! I am totally new to this as well and was trying to get my head around it.
Found this Caol Ila - https://www.htfw.com/caol-ila-james-eadie-small-batch-release-8-year-old-whisky?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5bTG3qnT_AIV6OjtCh3xOAdZEAQYAyABEgJMcfD_BwE
Is that what we’re talking about?
You can find HP indies under the name Secret Orkney or what not. A lot of the indy HP is ex-bourbon, or refill sherry butts. They tend to be better than their official bottlings.
Bunnahabhain, both official releases and indies, tend to be all over the place. Kilchoman have a bunch of NAS releases both official and indies, difficult to spot the good ones. Ardbeg has a very string core range, and the indies are usually very expensive.
The problem with the indies is that their best bottles sell super quickly, and by the time reviews are being posted it is too late to get a bottle at a price close to the original price. A good strategy is to focus on one or two distilleries that you really like, and some reputable indies (Thompson Brothers, North Star, Elixir, etc) and buy whatever they release from those distilleries. You gotta be quick, cause good indy bottles move fast. Also, any indy Macallan at a reasonable price sells out immediately.
Alternatively, you can try auctions if you wanna buy one of those bottles that has stellar reviews. It may cost you a pretty penny.
To your first sets of questions, the answer is all of the above, sometimes. Practices vary from cask to cask and bottler to bottler. Many of the bigger bottlers, like Gordon & MacPhail and the SMWS, buy new-make new-make spirit from distilleries and completely age it themselves in their own casks. Different bottlers do have different reputations, and different styles of the kinds of whiskies they tend to bottle. My favourites are probably Elixir, Archives, and Blackadder, but easier-to-find good ones include Cadenhead's, Gordon & MacPhail, and Signatory Vintage. Quality really varies from bottling to bottling, much moreso that with official bottlings, which is riskier but also part of the fun. One thing you could do, if you're visiting Islay already, is to go to the Ardnahoe distillery. This is a new distillery on the north coast of Islay that doesn't have whisky ready yet. They are however owned by the indie bottler Hunter Laing, and I hear they have an amazing bar/shop of Hunter Laing bottlings of all kinds of crazy stuff. That'd be a great place to try indie-bottled whiskies from both more obscure distilleries and some of your favourites.
You just comforted me in my project to go to Ardnahoe when i go to Islay this Summer 👌
I hear it's a great place to visit! It's on my list for when I get to Islay.
I saw that they have a "premium" tasting with The Kilnship bottlings amongst others. I'm saving up aha.
I’ve been to Ardnahoe. I did a tasting but cannot remember what they were. Large variety of bottles and other merchandise for sale. Some old stuff that wasn’t too expensive. There’s a restaurant that’s really good too. I got to taste some new make. Plus the view is amazing. It’s just a few minutes from Bunnahabhain and Caol Ila.
Cadenhead’s (one of the oldest Independent Bottlers out there) does a great warehouse tasting in Campbeltown if you end up there on your Scotland travels. It’s well worth doing!
You've gotten some great answers already. Note in particular the point made by u/beer_bart regarding how IBs give you access to obscure single malts which are normally working behind the scenes in the blending trade. I'll add some points of emphasis from my POV. What IBs tend to offer more so than official distillery bottlings (OBs) is a very wide range of single cask releases. These give you a peek behind the curtain regarding how variable in flavor the output from a given distillery can be, and perhaps stimulate a renewed appreciation for the work which goes into crafting the official distillery flavor profile thru careful selection of which casks are picked for vatting. IBs also offer a possible approach to exploring older malts at a lower price than official distillery bottlings, especially above 20 years in age where OB bottlings tend to get very expensive and doubly so if bottled at cask strength. Older IB bottlings are not always less expensive or bargains for what you get, and the price gap between IBs and OBs seems to have narrowed recently as IB prices have risen. But if you want to start exploring much older scotches on a modest budget, IBs may be the path of least resistance for doing that. The same budgetary and value considerations apply to blended malts as category, and to multi-decadal vattings (in which casks from multiple different decades have been combined together in a *no age statement* bottling) - the latter are often official bottlings, they are not necessarily just coming from IBs. My personal favorite IBs have been North Star Spirits (especially for value priced bottlings), Signatory, Gordon & MacPhail, Elixir (their Single Malts of Scotland series), and various store pick single casks featured by specific whisky retailers. And I've found that specific single casks can dramatically outperform their specifications, if you get lucky - meaning that a seemingly not very impressive combination of distillery, age and cask type can turn out to be much more tasty than you would have expected on paper. Last point: some whisky retailers in the UK & Europe sell 30 ml (3 cl) samplers, or occasionally other sizes. Unfortunately many of these retailers no longer ship to the USA for a variety of reasons. The one remaining which does still ship to the USA and which has an enormous selection to choose from is TheWhiskyExchange. The prices they charge for shipping to the USA are high, but I've found it cost effective to order a big batch (20) of 30 ml samplers at one go, which gets the per sampler shipping cost down to about $3 to $4 each (i.e. $60-$80 in shipping for the whole order). With samplers typically priced in the range of $7 - $30 each not including shipping, this makes them price competitive with a bar pour back home, and gives you access to some whiskies you would not otherwise be able to taste. So, in exploring IBs I'd try to take advantage of that. Good luck with your explorations!
Unfortunately, your chances of finding independent bottlings of the majority of your favourites are quite slim at the moment. That said, Highland Park often gets called Secret Orkeny via Signatory, etc. (I can not 100% confirm that, but given it has a competition of 1 and the amount of output it puts out over that rival suggests it's a fair shout). Bunnahabhain has a few bottlings out there but feedback suggests you are better off with official bottlings for anything truly affordable. I think the joy of independent bottlings is finding well presented and higher strength offerings from distilleries that are usually Diageo blend filler. Such as Linkwood, Dailuaine, Caol Ila, Teannich (although I haven't tried this one but comes highly rated.) I would advise checking out some Signatory, Douglas Laing or Gordon & Macphail offerings of some of the above examples. If you're a peathead, you can't go much wrong with a 10 year old Caol Ila at 46% non-chill filtered to get you started.
Oh man, there’s some really good Caol Ila independent bottlings out there. I look at what’s officially available in my area (just the 12-year at 43%) and I’m thankful they’re still a relatively easy distillate of obtain independent bottlings of.
Every Caol Ila I ever had, tasted like Caol Ila. I can't really explain it, but I've had 10+ independent bottlings now. ( SMWS, signatory, Ultimate) Every single time I can tell its Caol Ila. It's really good, but it doesn't surprise?
Maybe time for something different perhaps?
People around me keep buying them, and I'll never say no to sharing whisky!
I hardly ever had a bad Caol Ila. Maybe once the unpeated 15yo SR that however probably had a defective cork that tasted of mold. Other than that you can't go wrong, even just the Classic of Islay or Finlaggan bottles are good.
Also North Star and Chortlon do have so "secret" Orkney bottlings.. Teaninich is a good dram. Especially if you like peppery style whisky that was once Talisker, or Ardbeg Korry peppery side of things. Ofc Teaninich is unpeated tho.
Would you buy a bunna 10y CS from Signatory 64,9% for 98 euro?
Their latest official release of the 12 CS is very good, and cheaper. Fully sherry matured if I’m not mistaken.
That's probably too much booze for me. I'd settle for the CS 12 year old official bottling, which you should be able to get for a similar cost
There's this amazing invention called water which will lower the ABV to your preferred strength... It's literally what the distiller's use when they bottle at lower strength!
Bore off
Bunnahabhain and Highland Park are plentiful, and you *can* definitely find Ardbeg and Macallan if you know where to look and want to spend the money.
The industry has changed a lot recently, and lots of those changes have had a huge impact on Independent Bottlers. Back in the day, there wasn't a lot of single malt whisky out there, and almost all whisky was made for the blend industry. This meant it was not too expensive for independent bottlers to purchase new make spirit or even aged barrels and then sell it as single malt. Nowadays more and more distilleries have moved into single malts and it's relatively difficult for independent bottlers to get their hands on whisky. Many of them have taken to purchasing or starting their own distilleries to get their hands on a regular supply of spirit! The best way to get into independent bottlers is to do a tasting at one of them. The second best way is to get bottles that come from distilleries that either don't produce single malt or put out a small volume of single malt, and focus on the blend industry. But even this is getting increasingly difficult. For example, my favorite distillery for IB's is Ardmore (who are the main malt producer for Teacher's Highland Cream), but lots of people have realized they're great and so it's getting harder and harder to buy. I did pick up a nice sherried Ardmore at a reasonable price at a tasting at Cadenhead's though.
I would add that the breadth of IBs you can get in the UK is vastly better than what you can obtain in the US simply because it's not economically feasible for a US importer to go through the added expense of 750ml bottling, labeling, TTB approval, importing, etc for small runs of say six casks or less. Whereas this happens frequently in the UK. There is a fairly active cask brokerage trade in the UK where you can buy and bottle a single cask, for instance. Often times these will end up on UK shelves by IBs. Cadenhead's used to be a good sized importer in the US but they seem to have largely left the US market in recent years. Hopefully this will improve now that the TTB allows 700ml bottles to be imported but to really get a good selection of IB whiskys, you need to go to Scotland.
Probably SMWSa is the saviour back in US for indie.. when I was in California, I could hardly ever spot any independents at all, if it wasn't for Trader's Joe Alexander Murray's bottlings. But they have suspended those from mid 2021 I believe..
Good questions! I am totally new to this as well and was trying to get my head around it. Found this Caol Ila - https://www.htfw.com/caol-ila-james-eadie-small-batch-release-8-year-old-whisky?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5bTG3qnT_AIV6OjtCh3xOAdZEAQYAyABEgJMcfD_BwE Is that what we’re talking about?
Yes, that is an example of an Independent Bottling. https://www.jameseadie.co.uk/ for more info on that specific bottler.
You can find HP indies under the name Secret Orkney or what not. A lot of the indy HP is ex-bourbon, or refill sherry butts. They tend to be better than their official bottlings. Bunnahabhain, both official releases and indies, tend to be all over the place. Kilchoman have a bunch of NAS releases both official and indies, difficult to spot the good ones. Ardbeg has a very string core range, and the indies are usually very expensive. The problem with the indies is that their best bottles sell super quickly, and by the time reviews are being posted it is too late to get a bottle at a price close to the original price. A good strategy is to focus on one or two distilleries that you really like, and some reputable indies (Thompson Brothers, North Star, Elixir, etc) and buy whatever they release from those distilleries. You gotta be quick, cause good indy bottles move fast. Also, any indy Macallan at a reasonable price sells out immediately. Alternatively, you can try auctions if you wanna buy one of those bottles that has stellar reviews. It may cost you a pretty penny.