The whisky independant bottlers

Official traffic jams VS independent traffic jams

There are two distinct families:

Official bottlings (OB): this means that the bottle has been bottled under the name of the distillery that produces it.

Independent bottlings (IB): this means that the bottle has been bottled by another company that does not own a distillery. You may be familiar with some of them, such as Gordon & MacPhail, Douglas Laing, Robert Graham, Whisky Society, etc.

Independent bottlings are becoming increasingly fashionable, and offer a number of advantages. For example, they give consumers access to whiskies at a reasonable price, even though these whiskies are originally in a higher price range.

Sometimes, bottlers go a step further, buying distillates fresh from the still to age in their own cellars. They do this to take control of the aging process and implement their own strategy, resulting in unique whiskies.