legal question

by **kildalton** » Sat May 05, 2007 10:58 pm

I'm troubled about this :

I have a couple of casks(not really just to make an example) and some of them are below 40% and others above.
The final % of vatting is above 40%.
It's legal whisky or as a distillery I'm obliged not to use spirit under 40%?

by **vitara7** » Sat May 05, 2007 11:23 pm

as long as the % is 40% or above once the vatting has taken place its fine.

by **Mustardhead** » Sat May 05, 2007 11:31 pm

This is one of the ideas behind Duncan Taylor's Lonach range. They'll find they own a couple of casks of 1967 Ben Haggis, one is down at 36% and one is at 44% and by the time they are vatted they find they have something which scrapes in at 40.2% and bottle it. They save some damned good stuff by that method

by **kildalton** » Sun May 06, 2007 12:56 am

Thanks for the replies! :thumbsup:

by **Lawrence** » Sun May 06, 2007 6:28 pm

This is specifically mentioned in the Scotch Whisky Act and the practice of vatting two (or more) casks together to bring them above 40% is allowed. (Thank God!). Although the age is then dirived from the youngest cask in the group.

by **Iain** » Sun May 06, 2007 8:13 pm

Lawrence wrote: Although the age is then dirived from the youngest cask in the group.

Which is one of the reasons that some bottlings containing a high proportion of very old sms - the original The Glenlivet Archive from the 1990s springs to mind - have no age statement. If an age statement had been added, it would have to have been that of the small amount of relatively young TG that was added to the vatting to get the strength up to 40 pc abv or more, thus giving the consumer the impression it was pretty run-of-the-mill stuff.

The old TG Archive No-Age was a pretty tasty dram, imo.

by **karlejnar** » Sun May 06, 2007 8:31 pm

Iain wrote:Which is one of the reasons that some bottlings containing a high proportion of very old sms

This is an exellent way of reducing the strength of a malt.
I think Springbank once did that to reduce the 100proof for the USA market. But I'm afraid they don't do it anymore.

It's a pity that most malts are reduced by adding water IMHO.

by **Iain** » Sun May 06, 2007 9:13 pm

Karlejnar, afaik the usual intention isn't to reduce the strength of a younger sms, but rather to boost the strength of the older stuff to meet or exceed the 40 pc abv requirement so that it can be put on the market under the name of "Scotch whisky"!