First Edition Jura 1998

Tasting Notes

Producer Tasting Note

Nose: A sweet, mellow nose of vanilla, melon, and golden syrup.

Palate: Smooth and sweet on the palate with vanilla, custard, powder, pears and a creamy mouthfeel leading to a long, slightly dry, satisfying finish.

Independent Bottler

Yes, these are two separate companies, but it is difficult to talk about one without talking about the other. So, let's kill two birds with one stone, shall we? - Evan

The Hatfields & McCoys. The Montagues and Capulets. The Laings and... The Laings?

History is full of family feuds. It is also full of long-running game shows promoting the vicious rivalry. Sometimes, though, a family doesn't need to have an outside influence to struggle against because the issue lies within.

The History

Douglas Laing is an independent bottler that was founded in 1948 by Fred Douglas Laing after he acquired the rights to the King Of Scots Blend. Fred Sr. and his wife had two sons. Stewart Hunter Laing was born in 1946. Fred Hamilton Laing (Fred Jr.) was born in 1950. Both brothers eventually joined Fred Sr. working at Douglas Laing. Before that though, they both had apprenticeships at other Scotch Whisky companies; something that seems to be a hallmark of families who make Scotch Whisky their trade.

Stewart Laing joined his father Fred Sr. at Douglas Laing in 1967. He had previously apprenticed at Bruichladdich Distillery and other places within the industry. Stewart and his wife had their first son, Scott, in 1979. A few years later in 1982, their second son Andrew was born.

Fred Laing Jr's first apprenticeship was at Whyte and Mackay starting in 1968, where he learned all parts of whisky production and business, including the art of blending. From there he moved to White Horse Distillers in 1969 to further enhance his blending knowledge. In 1972, he officially joined his Father, Fred Sr., at the family business of Douglas Laing. In 1982, Fred Jr's daughter Cara was born.

Fred Sr., AKA Fred Douglas Laing; the founder of Douglas Laing & Co, passed away in 1984. It was then up to his sons to run the company on their own.

Splitting The Family Company

Brothers' Stewart and Fred Jr. quietly – or not so quietly – didn’t really get along. This eventually led the two to go their separate ways in 2013. Stewart Laing took with him some brands created at his former company such as Old Malt Cask and Old & Rare. Fred Laing Jr. kept the Douglas Laing and brands such as Big Peat, Old Particular, and of course, the exclusive rights to his fabulous moustache.

Fred Laing Jr. & daughter Cara Laing - the new Douglas Laing

Douglas Laing continued on, operating under Fred Jr's stewardship to this day. They have created some new labels since, focusing more on the Blends and Blended Malt side of things than Hunter Laing typically does. Fred Laing was joined by his daughter Cara at about the same time as the split.

Douglas Laing does bottle single casks of whisky under the Provenance, Old Particular and XOP labels. However, with Fred Jr's knowledge in blending and the brand King of Scots still in hand, the company has kept a big focus on blending, introducing an entire line of regional blended malts over the late 2010s. The company has dubbed this lineup The Remarkable Regional Malts of Scotland. These include:

• Big Peat - a blended malt made entirely of single malts from Islay
• Scallywag - representing the Speyside region
• Rock Island (originally named Rock Oyster) - made from malts from the Inner Hebridean Isles of Skye, Mull, Jura, Islay, with the Orkneys and Arran thrown in just for kicks
• Timorous Beastie - name taken from a Robert Burns poem with malt selected from Highland distilleries
• The Gauldrons - featuring a blend of Campbeltown malts
• The Epicurean - representing the dapper Lowland malts

The Douglas Laing company announced the acquisition of its first distillery in October 2019. The Strathearn Distillery, founded in 2013, is located near Methven in Perthshire. Technically located in the Southern Highlands, it is near the lowlands region and about an hour and a half drive from Douglas Laing's headquarters in Glasgow. 

Stewart Laing & sons Scott and Andrew Laing form Hunter Laing

Hunter Laing was founded in 2013 by chairman Stewart Hunter Laing and his sons Andrew and Scott. Hunter Laing came to being from a dividing of assets owned by the company Douglas Laing & Co, which Stewart and his brother Fred Laing Jr. had operated together since Fred Laing Sr. – their father passed away in 1984.

The new company has more of a focus on Single Malt Whisky and often single casks than Douglas Laing, with new releases under Old Malt Cask, Old & Rare, Sovereign, The First Editions, and Hepburn's Choice hitting store shelves periodically. Regular releases as well as the mystery peated Islay Single Malt under the name Scarabus are also consistently available. Oh, and Hunter Laing also bottles rum under the wonderfully silly moniker Kill Devil.

Three years after the split, in 2016, Hunter Laing announced plans to build a distillery on Islay. The company’s Ardnahoe Distillery officially opened in 2019. The first Single Malt whisky releases from Ardnahoe hit shelves in 2024.

It is now more than a decade since Stewart and Fred Laing split the business and their progeny joined them in earnest. The brothers and their respective companies of Hunter Laing and Douglas Laing still show much of the whisky DNA that their father built into it, and them. 

Distillery

Originally written by Evan for a blog post relating to KWM's 2020 Whisky Calendar.

The Isle of Jura Distillery is the only distillery on the Isle of Jura (yes, I did read my previous sentence and no, I am not going to change it). The distillery site was originally founded in 1810 when it started its life under the name Small Isles Distillery. While it operated for most of the 19th century, it was shut down in 1901 and mostly dismantled. Jura Distillery was finally rebuilt and revived six decades later in 1963 when whisky production on the site started once more.

The distillery may not receive the amount of love from consumers that it should, currently. It is owned by Whyte and Mackay/Emperador and while the company does try to put focus on the Jura label, it is overshadowed by another brand in their portfolio. That is Dalmore Distillery, which has more of a following (and a lot more pretension in my opinion). It could be worse, though: Have you heard of Fettercairn or Tamnavulin? In Alberta, we just started to receive official bottlings from these two distilleries, but not much effort has been put into making them household names at this point.

While Jura whisky has a fanbase, the label and lineup have been a little scattershot and schizophrenic over the past decade or more. For years, it was tough to figure out what kind of whisky you were going to be getting from a lineup that carried both unpeated, lightly peated, and heavily peated whisky. I know they were trying to brand their peated styles with the mysterious names of ‘Superstition’ and ‘Prophecy’, but telling what was peaty and what was not in their range could be difficult for consumers.

The Jura brand was relaunched in 2018, though you can still find some of the older bottlings on shelves. The new range might not be much better for consumer understanding.