production date

[namsilat]

I was wondering if there's a guide somewhere on this site or elsewhere online to help people to identify year of production of different whisky. I am assuming that there should be a way to do so from information somewhere off the bottle.

[fwrightson]

identify year of production of different whisky

By law, all Scotch whisky must age no less than three years. When the distillery puts the age statement on the bottle (10 years, 12 years, etc) that is the age of the 'youngest' whisky in the bottle (unless it is a single cask bottling, there are several ages in the mix).

But, I think what you are asking is the year of distillation indicated any where on the bottle/label. The general answer is no. There is no indication of either year of distillation or year of bottling (i.e., when it came out of the maturation cask). However, there are now some small batch expressions where all of this is handwritten on the label.

[leafs264]

So, if you were looking for say..... a Macallan 18 from 1985, how would you be able to tell it was really from 1985 if there is no markings on the bottle?

[bredman]

Best you can do is just read off the bottling code, but this will only tell you when the whisky was bottled. It's easier to find on some bottles than on others. When you located this code just a little research and you can decipher it, and you'll have the year, the day, and the time. Usually it's etched or ink printed directly onto the glass, most likely beneath the back label, sometimes you have to reflect the light off the glass to read/find it.

Dunno about older bottlings generally.

On this Ardbeg i have to hand its L7 058 02.39 4ML.

You won't know the distilling date unless it's printed on the bottle label specifically, usually on single cask bottlings (e.g. Douglas Laing bottles) as many bottlings will have contents distilled years apart.

[corbuso]

Could you please specify what you are looking at?
Dating old bottles, identify the year of bottling or the year of distillation?