This query has been up on the site for a while and I thought it had quietly gone to sleep. But nothing ever sleeps on the web and now (November 10th 2008) I learn from Michael Walton that "McClellands whiskey was produced at Bladnoch distillery in Ayrshire,
Scotland, once owned by the McClelland family. I don't know if it is still
distilled there." So if the label did imply an Islay origin, it was mischievous. I'll leave my original reply up since it addresses some wider issues. Thanks, Michael.

I’ve never heard of a McClelland’s single malt, nor have I found any references to it in any books, so I can’t give you a conclusive answer. However there are a few useful things to say. First of all, there are casks of all Islay malts out there in the broking trade, so in theory it could be any of the malts. However it is unlikely to be Lagavulin because demand constantly outstrips supply, and if it was Laphroaig, Ardbeg or Bowmore, then you would notice the peatiness, which you don’t mention. If it’s unpeated, then it would have to be either Bunnahabhain, Bruichladdich or the unpeated version of Caol Ila, and of course much of its character would depend on the wood in which it had been stored. What really intrigues me is that you say that it’s “ghastly”.

This means one of two things. Either that it comes from Islay but has been badly stored in poor-quality wood (since the distillation at Bunnahabhain, Bruichladdich and Caol Ila is very good – these are fine, well-run distilleries). Or that it doesn’t come from Islay at all. And that leads me to the point that I’d really like to make, which is that in my view the Scotch whisky industry doesn’t take origin with anything like the seriousness with which it should. You say that your bottle implies an Islay origin. This means that it doesn’t conclusively say whether it’s from Islay or not. Yet it’s a single malt.

That means that it’s either from an Islay distillery -- or it isn’t. You, the consumer, should be left in no doubt. You probably remember the Cardhu farce – sales were going so well in Spain that Diageo turned Cardhu overnight from a single malt into a vatted malt. The public outcry was such that they backed down, and Cardhu is once more a single malt, but the point is that Diageo felt entirely unconstrained from doing it in the first place. Origin simply didn’t matter enough. Sales were all.

A manipulative brand mentality took priority over truth to place. This just isn’t good enough. The whole point about single malts is character and individuality – the taste of a particular malt mixed with water which comes tumbling off a precise hill or drains from a named dark loch, fermented in certain washbacks and distilled in unique stills, then (ideally) aged close to the place in which it came into being. I say ‘ideally’ there, since as those who have read Peat Smoke and Spirit will know much Islay whisky is aged far away from the island, on the Scottish mainland. In my view, this is another deplorable sleight of hand practised on the trusting consumer.

When I drink an Islay 10-year-old, I want to know that it’s spent that decade quietly ageing in the salty, wind-trounced air of Islay. That matters to me. If those who own Scotland’s great malt whisky distilleries really want them to acquire enduring meaning and value for generation after generation of consumers, then origin – from the first drop of loch water to the last drop filling the bottle – must be sacrosanct. And legally guaranteed. Which is far from the case at present.