How is whisky bottled?

The bottler empties one or more casks, combines the contents in a tank, brings the mixture to strength with water, filters it and fills it.

Blending is done because every cask matures differently. By pouring together dozens or hundreds of casks, a bottler keeps the flavour of a fixed bottling the same year after year. If only a single cask is used, it is called a single cask and the edition is as large as that one cask allows.

After combining, a filtration step usually follows to remove fibres and cask residues. Some bottlers chill the whisky strongly in the process, others do not. A separate page on that choice is at /whisky/vragen/wat-betekent-non-chill-filtered/.

Forty percent is the legal minimum. Whisky may not be bottled below that strength in the European Union or under the Scottish rules, so many bottlers dilute to exactly that limit.

Whisky usually comes out of the cask at a higher strength. With demineralised water it is brought down to the desired bottling strength. The further it is diluted, the more bottles a cask yields, and 40 percent is the lowest point the law allows.

The shop at Brink 2 in Bathmen stocks 606 whiskies at exactly 40 percent, from 215 brands from 21 countries. That is well over a sixth of the 3,943 whiskies on the shelf.

A higher content means that less water has been added back, or none at all. At cask strength the whisky goes into the bottle at the strength it had in the cask.

Bottling at 46 percent or higher is a choice of the bottler, not a legal requirement. Because less water goes in, a cask yields fewer bottles. With cask strength the content also differs per cask and per bottling, so that two bottles of the same brand can have a different percentage on the label.

Of the 3,943 whiskies in Bathmen, 2,703 are at 46 percent or higher, from 417 brands from 25 countries; the highest is at 73.7 percent. Of these, 2,051 come from Scotland, 156 from Ireland, 83 from the Netherlands, 77 from the United States and 67 from Japan.

Only water and plain caramel (E 150a) for the colour. Adding alcohol is not allowed, sweetening is not allowed, not even to round off the flavour, and neither is flavouring.

Regulation (EU) 2019/787 names in Annex I, category 2, caramel E 150a as the only permitted additive, and solely to adjust the colour. The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 come to the same thing: nothing may be added to Scotch Whisky except water and plain caramel colouring, separately or together.

Colouring is used to give bottles from different casks the same shade. A bottler does not have to do it, and those who refrain often state this on the label themselves. That statement is not mandatory.

The name, the net quantity and the actual alcohol content are mandatory. For drinks above 1.2 percent alcohol, a list of ingredients and a nutrition declaration do not have to appear on the label.

Extra rules apply to Scotch Whisky. The category, for example Single Malt or Blended, belongs on the front of the bottle. An age is expressed in years and refers to the youngest whisky in the bottle. Names of regions such as Islay, Speyside and Highland may only be used if the whisky was distilled there.

De flesmaat ligt ook vast: gedistilleerd in voorverpakking mag alleen in een vaste reeks inhouden op de markt komen, van 100 tot 2.000 ml, met onder meer 350, 500 en 700 ml. Verkoop blijft gebonden aan NIX18: wij verstrekken geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar.