Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 46, 2007

Single Malt Scotch is a type of whisky, distilled by a single distillery in a pot still, using malted barley as the only grain ingredient in Scotland. As with any Scotch whisky, a Single Malt Scotch must be distilled in Scotland and matured in oak casks in Scotland for at least three years (most single malts are matured for longer).

• "Malt" indicates that the whisky is distilled from a single "malted" grain. Not all grains can be malted - (rye is another grain which can be malted) - but in the case of single malt Scotch, barley is always the grain used.

• "Single" indicates that all the malts in the bottle comes from a single distillery. Multi-distillery malts are usually called "blended malt", "vatted malt" or (deliberately confusing, perhaps) "pure malt".

All single malt Scotch goes through a similar batch production process. At bottling time various batches are mixed together or vatted to achieve consistent flavours from one bottling run to the next. Even so, some variation does occur.