Hunter Laing & Co

By Hunter Laing's own timeline, Stewart Laing's father Frederick founded a whisky blending business in Glasgow in 1949, and Stewart joined him in 1964. Stewart developed the family's blends, such as House of Peers, in South American and Asian markets. As interest in single malt grew, the family introduced the Old Malt Cask single cask range in 1998 and the cask-strength Old and Rare series. In 2010 Stewart's son Andrew founded Edition Spirits and its First Editions bottlings.

After the family business divided in 2013 (see Douglas Laing), Stewart and his sons Andrew and Scott formed Hunter Laing & Co. at 16 Park Circus, Glasgow, absorbing Edition Spirits and the Premier Bonding bottling company. It expanded a 14,000-cask warehouse in East Kilbride in 2015 and built Ardnahoe, which began distilling in 2018. Stewart Hunter Laing died in 2026.

The company's head office is at 16 Park Circus in Glasgow's West End. Casks mature either at the distilleries that fill them or in the company's own warehouses in the Glasgow area, including the East Kilbride warehouse; the company credits the cool, damp climate of the west of Scotland with good maturation. Its distillery, Ardnahoe, is on the north-east coast of Islay. Each single cask bottling is labelled with the distillery where it was made.

Hunter Laing sources ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks from cooperages in Scotland and the United States and from Spanish bodegas, and sends them to distilleries to be filled under long-standing filling contracts. Much of its output is blended whisky. Casks of particular quality are set aside, and a tasting panel of the family and the master blender decides whether to bottle them as single casks: at 46% (Hepburn's Choice), at 50% (Old Malt Cask) or at cask strength (First Editions, Old and Rare, Sovereign). Bottling is done by hand at its Premier Bond bottling hall. The company says no single cask bottling is coloured or chill-filtered.

Like other independent bottlers, Hunter Laing has no single house flavour for its single casks; each range is defined by strength and selection rather than taste. The family panel writes the tasting notes printed on labels or certificates. Its own distillery adds a peated Islay single malt, Ardnahoe, first released in 2024.