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Craigton Packaging Ltd, 43-45 Scott’s Road, Paisley PA2 7AN - T: 0044 (0)141 887 0244 F: 0044 (0)141 887 5462 E: info@craigton.com
The majority of private owners of whisky casks who contact us are looking for information about bottling or for an assessment of other options.
General
We recommend private owners bottle at cask strength as this minimizes the number of bottles required making it cheaper for bottling and requiring less storage space. The materials needed for our standard single malt presentation include: tall round clear bottle, varnished wood top stopper cork, gold coloured pure tin capsule and plain white outer cases. We offer a simple, yet elegant, black and white label in a standard format which includes all the appropriate information relating to the owner’s cask. It would include your name, the distillery from which the cask originated and the cask details including date of fill, cask number, strength etc. You are of course welcome to supply your own labels. We recommend that you supply plain paper as opposed to self adhesive and we can supply details of suitable paper and the correct paper grain alignment. If you plan to print your own be aware that labels printed on ink jet computer printers are likely to have the ink run if the whisky is spilled on the label. A laser colour printer is however a very good option for short run label production.
A typical hogshead cask of 10 year old whisky will yield around 280 bottles at a strength close to 60% alcohol. If you were to bottle at 40% this would entail the addition of around 120 litres of water and would require an extra 171 bottles to contain the increased bulk volume. It would also mean that the whisky would need to be chill filtered to maintain it’s clarity and brightness in the bottle as the reduction in strength causes the whisky to become cloudy. Chill filtration impairs the flavour of the whisky and is therefore avoided by the majority of purveyors of fine Scotch Malt Whisky and it is normal for such products to be bottled at high strength i.e. 46% or more. It will still go cloudy in the glass if you add water and/or ice but at least you know why and you have the benefit of all of the flavour!
There are options for defraying or deferring some of the costs involved in getting your product into bottles:
Many people form a syndicate with family or friends. This reduces the cost burden per person but of course you get less of the whisky. This is not usually a problem as it will take over five years for one person to get through one cask at a bottle per week and remember that this is at cask strength which is more like 1½ bottles at 40%. It follows therefore that a syndicate of five could organize one cask per year between them and have a regular supply. A private syndicate who are not trading, i.e. buying and selling casks, can be treated in the same way as an individual private owner and does not currently need to be registered with Customs and Excise.
Bonded Storage
The majority of expense when bottling is incurred in the form of duty and VAT with the VAT also being levied on the duty. You can however choose to store your bottled whisky in a bonded warehouse. If you can locate a convenient warehouse, assuming they are happy to support a private owner, then you can store the whisky under bond and pay the duty and VAT as and when you remove the goods for use. You are likely to be charged pennies per case per week for bonded storage but please do confirm this with your chosen warehouse in advance. Each time you withdraw stock from bond you will incur charges for Customs & Excise duty payment documents so it is worthwhile withdrawing reasonable batches at a time and not single cases which would probably upset the warehouse keeper as well!
Other Services
In addition to the supply of dry goods and the bottling service we can arrange transport of the cask from it’s existing location along with the requisite Customs & Excise movement guarantee and the delivery of cased stock either duty paid to your home, other location or under bond to your chosen bonded warehouse.
As a small company we have limited staff resources but are always pleased to try and assist should you require further information.