Douglas Laing & Co

Fred Douglas Laing founded the business in 1948, the company says, with a few casks of blended Scotch and a newly bought brand name, King of Scots. To secure stock he set up filling contracts with many distilleries, and the company says many are still in place. Companies House records Douglas Laing & Company Limited as incorporated on 31 March 1950.

His son Fred joined in 1972 after training in other firms; ScotchWhisky.com says the focus moved over the years from exporting blends to bottling single malts. Fred and his brother Stewart ran the firm together until 2013, when they divided the assets and Stewart left to found Hunter Laing. Fred's daughter Cara joined in 2013 and later became managing director. In 2017 the company announced plans for a Glasgow distillery, and in October 2019 it bought Strathearn.

The company's head office is Douglas House on Mossland Road, Hillington, on the west side of Glasgow. Its own distillery, Strathearn, is in Perthshire. As a bottler and blender it draws whisky from distilleries in every Scotch whisky region, and its blended malt range is built around regions: The Epicurean for the Lowlands, Timorous Beastie for the Highlands, Scallywag for Speyside, The Gauldrons for Campbeltown, Rock Island for the islands and Big Peat for Islay.

Douglas Laing fills and buys casks at distilleries it does not own, then bottles them as single casks or blends them into blended malts. Its single cask ranges, according to ScotchWhisky.com, include Old Particular and Xtra Old Particular, both malt and grain, and Provenance and Premier Barrel. Big Peat, an Islay blended malt, dates from 2009. The company says it bottles "as natural as it gets", adding nothing and taking nothing away, and its tasting notes on single casks are signed "FHL" by Fred Laing.

Each single cask carries its distillery's own character. The blended malts, by contrast, are designed by the company to stand for a region, from the Lowland Epicurean to the peated Big Peat. The company's stated aim is to present whisky "as the distiller intended". Strathearn single malt, bottled at 50%, is now part of the range.