Berry Bros. & Rudd

Berry Bros. & Rudd dates itself to 1698 and has traded from No. 3 St James's Street ever since; ScotchWhisky.com says the shop was founded by the Widow Bourne. The company describes itself as Britain's oldest wine and spirits merchant and says it is still family-owned and run, with members of the Berry and Rudd families in charge.

Its whisky history includes the Cutty Sark blend, created in 1923, and Blue Hanger, first made in 1934 as a blend for the diplomatic export market and sold in Britain from 1958. Blue Hanger was named after William "Blue" Hanger, the third Lord Coleraine, a customer in the 1790s, and was revived in 2003 as a blended malt. The firm owned the Glenrothes single malt brand for several years while Edrington ran the distillery, and sold the brand back to Edrington in 2017.

The company is in London, not Scotland: its shop and head office are at 3 St James's Street, with shops in London and Basingstoke and offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, DC. Its Scotch whiskies are distilled and matured in Scotland, and the label of each Own Selection bottling names the distillery. It is included here as a route to single casks and small producers, such as Daftmill, whose whisky it distributes.

Under the Berrys' Own Selection name the company's spirits buyer chooses casks and bottles them under the Berry Bros. & Rudd label. Single cask bottlings give the distillery, vintage, cask reference and strength: for example a 2018 Glen Wyvis from cask 157 at 58.1%, or a 2013 Blair Athol from cask 303634 at 56.5%. Small batch bottlings, such as a 2013 Linkwood, are at 46%. Blue Hanger is blended from the company's reserves; the 14th edition came from seven casks, the youngest 26 years old. The range also includes whiskies from England, Wales, Sweden, Finland, India, the United States, Tasmania and New Zealand.

As a merchant-bottler, the company has no single house style for its single casks; each shows its distillery and cask. For Blue Hanger, which has no fixed recipe, the company describes recurring notes of orchard fruit, gentle smoke and orange peel. Its single cask list mixes long-established Scotch distilleries with new ones such as Glen Wyvis.