The company
Hunter Laing is a young and old company that operates as an independent bottler and whisky blender. The Glasgow-based company was founded by Stewart Hunter Laing. Stewart previously ran the independent bottling company Douglas Laing with his brother Fred for over 40 years. The company was split up in 2013: Fred took over Douglas Laing & Co. with his daughter Cara, Stewart acquired his own bottling plant and brought Hunter Laing to life. At that time, Stewart already had around 50 years of experience in the whisky industry.
Stewart is supported in running the company by his sons Andrew and Scott. The two also have a whisky background. They founded the sub-company and launched the First Editions series there. Before Hunter Laing, the two brothers worked as directors for the independent bottler Edition Spirits Ltd.
In 2016, Hunter Laing was granted planning permission for its own whisky distillery on the island of Islay. The new Ardnahoe distillery was created. The first batch was distilled and the first casks filled at Ardnahoe in 2018. It is not yet known exactly when the first whisky will be released in early 2023, but we can expect a classically peated Islay whisky. Tours of the distillery are already on offer!
The range
For the Old Malt Cask series, Hunter Laing's warehouses are searched once a month for fully matured casks. The individual casks are always bottled without chill-filtering and with an alcohol content of 50% vol. Each bottle is labelled with a brief description of the flavour for the connoisseur. Rare malts are bottled under the Old and Rare series. The bottles are also not chill-filtered or coloured and are packaged in an elegant wooden box. As the whiskies are matured for a particularly long time, each cask produces very few bottles due to evaporation during maturation. From time to time, the Old and Rare bottlings are also available in oversized 'magnum' bottles. The Hepburn's Choice range is dedicated to an ancestor of Stewart Laing: William Hepburn was the grandfather of the Hunter Laing director and a great connoisseur of whisky from his native Scotland. In his memory, the independent bottler selects single casks that are bottled unfiltered, uncoloured and at 46% strength by volume. The design of the Hepburn's Choice bottlings shows at first glance which region the whisky comes from: Speysiders are red, Highlanders purple, island whiskies blue and Islay whiskies green.
