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Laphroaig Independent Bottlings

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golfchaos started a discussion

I don't understand when a bottle says Laphroaig but it is bottled by Signatory Vintage. Is it an actual Laphroaig brewery bottle? Can someone explain this to me? I have only started collecting Single Malts and I love Laphraoig. Therefore, I was only going to collect them explicitly. So would the aforementioned count towards my collection goals?

12 years ago

8 replies

systemdown replied

Hi @golfchaos, Islay whiskies are indeed popular.

In the whisky world, you have "official bottlings" (OBs) that come from the distilleries themselves (note: not "breweries" - they make beer, of course!) and then you have IBs (independent bottlings) that can take a distillery's whisky from the cask and bottle it under their own label - such is the case with Signatory Vintage.

There are dozens of independent bottlers around and likely to be hundreds of bottlings of a particular distillery in existence (unless you're talking about silent or "lost" distilleries from many decades past).

Quality may vary - there is no rule that says OBs are better than IBs or vice-versa, so do your homework on which particular bottlings, both official or independent, are likely to be ones that you want to try. Use reviews on this site or another (whiskyfun, whisky-monitor, whiskybase etc come to mind) to help inform yourself as to what's good or not in the world of Laphroaig.

12 years ago 3Who liked this?

golfchaos replied

@systemdown Thank you very much for your response and explanation. It is greatly appreciated and was very helpful.

12 years ago 0

systemdown replied

No problems, glad to help. Note: "OB" is usually an acronym for "original bottling" (vs. the "official bottling" in my previous reply, BUT you will see both terms in use. Also "DB" for "distillery bottling" which is the same thing - just to head off any potential confusion there).

12 years ago 0

SquidgyAsh replied

@golfchaos You might also want to take a look into the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Many of their single cask bottlings are brilliant and I just had a Laphroaigs of thirs last night that was awesome! Even better is that all of their bottlings are cask strength from a single cask so they are limited in number. Be warned though that sometimes the Society seems to pick casks that wouldn't be your typical normal whisky experience. I.e last night I was getting ice cream cones along with antiseptic and smoke off my laphraoig. Very weird and VERY good!

12 years ago 0