Blends
The original Scotch. Made by Scots.
What Scotch means
“Scotch” was coined for blended whisky.
Read more→
Single malt is Scotch too. But when people first used the word, blended whisky is what they meant.
Blending is not a step down from malt. It built Scotch’s reputation. A blender works with grain whisky and malt whisky from different distilleries, marries them in cask, and produces a spirit that is consistent, balanced and tasty. Too many experts dilute their whisky to around 20% before drinking it. A well-made blend is built for that.
The premium single malt market is a creation of the 1970s onward. The Scotch the world fell in love with — carried by ship to America, Russia, India, China — was blended.
Who drank it
Andrew Carnegie — Dewar’s→
Born Dunfermline, emigrated to Pittsburgh, built the American steel industry, gave the wealth back as libraries across the world. He drank half a glass of Scotch at lunch and half at dinner, prescribed by his doctor. In 1891 he asked John Dewar & Sons to send an 18-gallon cask to President Benjamin Harrison at the White House. American distillers were furious. Dewar’s was Scottish-owned then, run from Perth by the founder’s sons.
J. Pierpont Morgan — J&G Stewart→
The richest banker in America kept J&G Stewart blended Scotch — blended in Edinburgh by a firm founded in 1779 — in his New York cellar in sufficient quantity that, after his death in 1913, his son distributed bottles to Morgan’s friends with a printed label: From the cellar of J. Pierpont Morgan 1837–1913. A souvenir to his friends, 1915.
Queen Elizabeth — The Famous Grouse→
Elizabeth II in England, Elizabeth I in Scotland. She granted The Famous Grouse a Royal Warrant in the 1980s. Her sister Princess Margaret took it everywhere; UK embassies kept it stocked for her visits.
What’s happened since
Most of these brands are no longer owned by Scots.
- Dewar’s — Bacardi, Bermuda
- Johnnie Walker — Diageo, London
- Bell’s — Diageo, London
- Teacher’s — Beam Suntory, Japan
- Ballantine’s — Pernod Ricard, France
- Cutty Sark — La Martiniquaise, France
- The Famous Grouse — William Grant & Sons, Scotland (2024)
- J&G Stewart — Whyte & Mackay (Scottish blending led by master blender Richard Paterson)
Read more→
The brands were built in Scotland by Scots. The names came from people who lived and worked in Edinburgh, Perth, Kilmarnock, Glasgow. The owners today are elsewhere.
Bulk Scotch is now shipped from Scotland and bottled abroad. Until April 2024, much of it went to Japan to be blended with Japanese spirit and sold as “Japanese whisky” — legal in Japan because no rules required Japanese whisky to be Japanese. The rules have since tightened, and producers now correctly label such products “world blend.” The point holds: Scottish liquid sits in many bottles whose labels never say “Scotch.” The profit and the bottling employment leave Scotland.
Scotland is not England
And our customers know it.
Read more→
Scotland is a small country with its own history, its own legal system, its own church, its own anthem. Not the imperial history of the East India Company. When Scots went abroad in the 18th and 19th centuries, they went mostly as engineers, doctors, architects, teachers, shipbuilders — working with the countries they went to, not over them. Russia’s navy was modernised in part by Scottish shipbuilders. Modern tropical medicine was founded by a Scottish doctor working in China. Carnegie’s libraries stand in St Petersburg, Belgrade, Cape Town. That is the Scottish character we recognise.
RSD
We are Scottish-owned. We work from Edinburgh. We blend Scotch the way it was blended when Carnegie was sending cases to the White House and Morgan was filling his cellar in New York.
The whisky in the bottle is Scottish. The people who chose it for you are Scottish. The address you ring is in Edinburgh.
That is what Scotch was meant to mean.