How do you read a whisky label?

The legal category, the alcohol percentage and the net contents are mandatory. The category should be on the front of the bottle.

The category is one of five: Single Malt, Single Grain, Blended Malt, Blended Grain or Blended Scotch Whisky. It must be as prominent as any other description of the whisky, with the exception of the brand name, the distillation year, the bottling year and the age. Text or image may not run through it. The alcohol percentage and the content are mandatory for every drink with more than 1.2 percent alcohol.

An age on the bottle is the age of the youngest whisky in it, expressed in whole years and as a single number. Older material does not count.

If a blend says 12 years, every drop in that bottle has matured for at least twelve years; there may be much older whisky in it. Without an age statement, all you know is that everything has matured for at least three years. A bottle also may not carry a number that could cause confusion about whether it refers to the age, the maturation period or the year of distillation.

A distillation year is only allowed if all the whisky in the bottle comes from that one calendar year. In addition, a second time indication must appear in the same field of view.

That second indication is the bottling year, the maturation period or the age. That way you can work out for yourself how long the whisky has been in cask. A vintage without one of those three is therefore not permitted. Do not confuse the distillation year with the bottling year: for a bottle from 2004 that was bottled in 2020, it concerns sixteen years of maturation.

A protected distillery name may only be used as a brand name or part of it when the whisky has been distilled entirely at that distillery.

The regulation prevents a blend from riding on the name of a well-known distillery. It applies to the distilleries listed in schedule 1 of the regulation and to names of distilleries that were opened or reopened afterwards. In addition, a label may not give a wrong impression of where the whisky was distilled or who distilled it. Independent bottlers may therefore name the distillery, provided everything comes from there.

Five area names are protected: Highland, Lowland, Speyside, Islay and Campbeltown. A bottle may only bear such a name if the whisky was distilled in that area.

The regulation also demarcates the areas. Campbeltown is the South Kintyre ward of Argyll and Bute, Islay is the island of Islay, and Speyside consists of specifically named wards in Moray plus Badenoch and Strathspey. The name may appear at the front of the category, for example Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky. An area name says something about origin, not about a mandatory flavour.

The regulation describes the five categories, the age statement, the distillation year, the distillery name and the region names. Terms such as cask strength, small batch or finish do not appear in it.

What such words mean is decided by the bottler himself. Cask strength usually indicates that no water has been added, single cask a bottling from a single cask and non chill filtered the omission of cold filtration. Useful information, but nobody checks the definition. Feel free to ask if you want to know what a particular bottler means by it.