Want to Taste the World’s Most Exciting Whiskeys? You Need to Go Indie

Whether you’re a casual bar-goer or a committed whiskey collector, you’ve no doubt heard of Scotch whisky brand Johnnie Walker. According to the beverage analytics firm IWSR (International Wine and Spirits Record), the label was the top-selling Scotch whisky in the world in 2022, but its beginnings were remarkably humble. 

In the 1850s, a Scottish grocer named John Walker bought barrels of scotch from distilleries around the country, blended them, and sold them under his own label. This made Walker an early example of an independent bottler. 

Independent bottling companies endure in Scotland today. Some, like Douglas Laing & Co., Cadenhead’s, and Gordon & MacPhail, started over 150 years ago and today work as brokers, of sorts. They buy barrels from scotch distilleries and oversee aging. 

Some are ultimately bottled and sold as single malts — scotches produced at one individual distillery — while some are blended together. All are sold under the bottling company’s name. The source of single malts is typically indicated on the label. 

Now, independent spirits bottlers are entering new territory: the U.S. Over the past decade or so, creative entrepreneurs have launched companies inspired by this Scottish tradition. They’re scouring the country, and beyond, for spirits to blend and bottle. 

It’s important to note that when the American craft whiskey movement started, many distilleries sourced aged whiskey from big, established producers to bottle and sell while waiting for their own product to age in warehouses. They sold these whiskeys under their own brand names without necessarily revealing they didn’t actually distill or, in most cases, age the product themselves. While not an uncommon practice, it often gave “sourced” whiskey a bad reputation. 

But today, American indie bottlers embrace transparency. Here are a few of those enterprising brands whose spirits you should seek out.

Lost Lantern

There are currently over 2,000 distilleries in the U.S. but no single market to buy all their products. That’s largely a matter of distributor politics, a distilling industry frustration, as direct-to-consumer sales for spirits are still not legal. 

Access to a wider selection of the ever-increasing variety of American whiskeys is what drove Nora Ganley-Roper, a former sales manager at New York City’s Astor Wine & Spirits, and Adam Polonski, a former drinks journalist, to create Lost Lantern in 2018. 

The independent bottler’s mission is two-fold: bring increased exposure to not-often-widely-distributed products and, in the process, explore the emergence of regional styles in American whiskey. 

“With Lost Lantern, we’re looking to explore the landscape of U.S. whiskey and give people access to the range of flavors we see as we travel and taste thousands of whiskeys and explore the factors that influence them,” says Ganley-Roper. 

Climate, for instance, plays a critical role in determining a whiskey’s character. 

“As we’re looking at regions around the country, some consistencies emerge,” says Ganley-Roper. “Cooler climate brings a creaminess to the palate; Whiskeys can get a funky, almost rum-like, character in hot wet climates. Having all these products together under a single independent bottler’s label helps contextualize the American whiskey landscape.”

Lost Lantern releases both blends and single-barrel expressions. Polonski and Ganley-Roper have worked with 35 distilleries in 20 states to bottle single-cask products, single-distillery blends, and multi-distillery blends. The flagship, Far-Flung Bourbon, changes from batch to batch. Others are developed ad-hoc based on the regions from which they are sourced.

Barrell Craft Spirits

When Joe Beatrice ventured into the spirits industry in 2013, the tech entrepreneur and homebrewer knew he wanted to launch an American whiskey that was different from the growing number of brands on the shelf. But his interest wasn’t in distilling. It’s not easy — or financially feasible — to create a portfolio of products out of the gate. His solution: a blending house. 

“We want to make every product different in some way,” says Beatrice. “There are drinkers who are loyal to a brand, but a larger group is more adventurous. We’re always offering something different and new.”

Since 2013, Beatrice’s Louisville-based Barrell Craft Spirits has released 46 batches, which include bourbon, rye, other whiskey, and rum, and three in a cask finish series, plus many special releases and three signature blends. 

Each bottling is an exercise in blending whiskeys of different mash bills, distillation methods, barrels and aging environments. Sometimes it’s a mix of bourbons from different distilleries, sometimes it’s only ryes, and sometimes it’s a combination. 

Many blends are straightforward, while others are more esoteric, like the signature Seagrass blend made of American and Canadian ryes aged in apricot brandy, Madeira and Martinique rhum barrels. Foundation Bourbon, launched in October 2023, is the first non-cask-strength release. 

What connects all Barrel Craft products is Beatrice’s fanaticism around transparency. The origin and age of each component is printed on the label.

Single Cask Nation

What started in 2011 as a hobby for then whiskey bloggers Josh Hatton and Jason Johnston-Yellin has become an independent bottling company that grew in popularity so steadily that in January 2024, it was purchased by Artisanal Spirits Company, a Scottish group that also owns the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, an international membership-based club known for its curated barrel selections. 

Hatton, who worked over a decade in sales for importing company ImpEx Beverages, and Johnston-Yellin continue to oversee all cask selection and extra-maturation programs while steering the company’s direction. 

Around 2010, traffic to Hatton’s and Johnston-Yellin’s blogs clocked in at over 1,200 daily visitors as they’d become reliable sources that whiskey drinkers turned to for recommendations. Both often wrote about single malt scotches from heritage brands like Cadenhead’s and Gordon & MacPhail, which inspired them, and their readers, to learn more about individual distilleries. That educational element drives them today. 

“A distillery is tied to a flavor profile,” says Hatton. “Independent bottlers allow a peek behind the curtain [to] showcase a side of the distillery that people aren’t necessarily familiar with, as well as introducing people to distilleries they’ve never heard of, [and] taking them along for the flavor ride.”

Hatton notes how the underlying concept of independent bottlers might raise questions: If a distillery is selling its spirit in bulk to someone else, wouldn’t that suggest that they’re keeping the best for themselves and purging the rejects? Not quite. 

What it comes down to is that as a product, whiskey is subject to several variables that affect its flavor. Even small factors, like a barrel’s location in a warehouse, can have an impact on the liquid’s character. Sometimes a particular barrel’s spirit strays slightly from the house’s precise thumbprint. These variations are what independent bottlers prize.

Proof and Wood

When Dave Schmier launched his company in 2015, he bought nine barrels of rye whisky from MGP, an industrial-scale distillery in Indiana that was formerly owned by Seagram’s. He bottled it, called it Deadwood, and Proof and Wood was born. A succession of brands followed, and awards streamed in. 

The name of his company is a nod to the two things he can control as an independent bottler: the type of wood in which the spirit ages and the proof of bottling. 

Some of Schmier’s products, like an early release called Vertigo, consist of whiskeys from different distilleries, each made with its own grain recipe, that Schmier blends together. Others, like Deadwood Bourbon, are a straight bourbon, meaning the constituent bourbons are sourced from one individual distillery, though they could be all different ages. His growing product range also includes rums. 

“Basically, I bottle what I think is interesting,” says Schmier. “I like to highlight spirits that are unusual or exotic, yet accessible.”

For example, he bottled a barrel of a Polish whiskey he fell for as The Stranger, a one-time release. One-off products are where Schmier flexes his creative muscles. Cross-Border Jackpot was a medley of two Canadian whiskies and one American and Cabinet was a blend of rye and bourbon.  

The response to these unusual bottlings has been positive both from consumers and spirits critics alike.

“The long-term effect is we develop some trust with our customers,” says Schmier. “They’ll see something they’ve never heard of and try it because they trust us.”