Scotland: Single malt whisky through the producing distilleries: history, making, production and tasting notes
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Ian Macleod

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Visiting the installations of one of the most important Distillers, Blenders and Bottlers blenders of Scotch whisky is an impressing experience.
The reception was warm and the visit extremely instructive. Some obvious facts the general consumers do not always realize are worth some attention.
The whisky market is largely dominated by the selling's of blends. Not very long ago few distilleries exported much single malt outside Scotland. Glenfiddich was the first one who dared to sell serious volumes of single malt outside Scotland from 1963... In other words, the aim of all the distilleries was essentially to provide the blenders with raw material. Currently, single malt just represents about10% of global whisky sales.
So the evolution from blender to independent single malt bottler (and ultimately distiller) has been quite a natural phenomenon. For Ian MacLeod, a selection of their very best casks was all they had to choose. An important company like Ian McLeod Distillers Ltd has enough great stocks to be able to sell exceptional single malts. And they do.
Beside their blending and independent bottling activities, the company is very proud to own Glengoyne Distillery and also owns a half share of Broxburn Bottlers. Their bottling plant is really impressive.
The "Broxburn Bottlers" company is owned by Ian MacLeod distillers and J&G Grant, owners of Glenfarclas. Glenfarclas is bottled here too.
Round the corner, another bottling plant which used to belong to Diageo has been purchased by Glenmorangie some years ago.
Broxburn Bottlers also bottles for third parties including Old Pulteney and Finlaggan.
But their core business remains blending.
Ian MacLeod has important stocks of single malt, coming from most of the Scottish distilleries, obviously Glengoyne (owned by Ian MacLeod itself), Lagavulin, Scapa, Tobermory, Arran, Isle of Jura, Talisker, Mortlach and many others. It is important to know that the stocks from Lagavulin and Talisker are exclusively used within blends. As those malts belong to important collections, a gentleman agreement forbids them to bottle them as single malts.
Ian MacLeod also sells a famous vatted malt marketed by the company as "The Six Isles", made from single malts coming form all the whisky producing islands of Scotland (Arran, Mull, Skye, Orkney, Jura and Islay). As the Hebrides will soon have a next distillery, on Barra Island, an application trademark "The Seven Isles" at the UK Patent Office is already already made.
Amongst other blends, King Robert II, a cheap with however high quality standards, is principally sold on Asian markets.
Ian Macleod Distillers sell independent bottlings of all kinds of whiskies. The advantage of Ian Macleod is that they own lots of excellent casks and about 10% of those casks (out with Glengoyne) are sold as independent single malts, in the collections Chieftain’s, Dun Bheagan and Macleod’s Malts.
In order to avoid problems with distillery owners, Ian MacLeod avoids marketing malts which belong to important collections (like the Classic Malts).
Quality at all production steps is the main concern of this company. This is probably the key to their success.

The bottling plant
Ian MacLeod bottling plant Ian McLeod Bottling plant
King Robert II packaging bottling plant
 Ian McLeod king Robert II Ian McLeod casks
Some pallets of King Robert ii for Asian markets Some casks for blending's.
The containers on the background contain grain whisky for the blends.
 Ian McLeod bottling plant Ian McLeod
bottling some casks
 Ian McLeod  Ian McLeod
   
 Ian McLeod