The company
The independent bottler Signatory Vintage was founded in 1988 by Andrew Symington and his brother. At that time, Symington was still the manager of a luxury hotel in Edinburgh with a penchant for good Scotch whisky. Initially, Symington wanted to have a famous personality sign the bottle label of each bottling. Hence the company name Signatory Vintage, which translates from English as 'signed vintage'. The first cask that Signatory bottled was a Glenlivet sherry cask from 1968, but before a famous sponsor was found for the bottling, the bottles had long been on the market and sold. All that remains of the idea of the signed bottles today is the company name.
Until 1992, the company was based in Leith, a Scottish harbour town near Edinburgh. After the company expanded rapidly and therefore needed better connections to the infrastructure, it moved to Edinburgh. Signatory began bottling its own whiskies in the new company premises. A semi-automatic bottling line was built for this purpose. At the end of the 1990s, Andrew Symington bought out his brother and has been running the company himself ever since. In 2002, Symington acquired the Highland distillery Edradour. As this is a good hour and a half north of Edinburgh, in rural Pitlochry, the Signatory company relocated to the distillery's premises. However, the bottler's cask storage facilities are only partly located at Edradour, and warehouses have also been rented at various locations in Scotland.
The range
Signatory stores well over 10,000 casks in its various warehouses. Not all of the casks are bottled under the Signatory Vintage brand. Some casks prove to be insufficient for the quality standard of the independent bottler and are sold on again. Others, however, are filled into another cask for a finish after the first maturation. Symington generally has good relationships with the Scottish distilleries and even receives casks for independent bottlings from distilleries that do not normally sell them. Many Islay distilleries, for example, have such a high demand for whisky that they cannot spare any casks. However, whiskies from these distilleries, such as Bowmore or Laphroaig, are also released under the Signatory name.
Series
Signatory has different bottling series, in which mostly single casks are bottled. All bottles carry precise information about the distillation and bottling dates as well as the casks. This characterises the individual series:
Signatory Vintage: In the entry-level series for whisky newcomers, there are bottlings with a drinking strength of 43% vol. that are characterised by a particularly mild taste.
Unchillfiltered Collection : As the name suggests, the whiskies here are bottled without chill-filtering. They have a higher alcohol content so that they do not become cloudy when water or ice is added. This gives the malts a particularly intense flavour.
Cask Strength Collection: In this series, Signatory bottles all whiskies at natural cask strength without dilution. These malts are particularly suitable for advanced connoisseurs.
The Decanter Collection: This series is characterised by its presentation in an elegant Ibisco decanter. The maturation takes place in selected casks, the drinking strength is increased and the whisky is not coloured or chill-filtered.
Small Batch Edition: This series appears rarely and only has a small number of bottles. The cask numbers are indicated and the whisky is not chill-filtered or coloured.
Horseman and Archangels: In spring 2023, Signatory launched two new series with the Caol Ila from Horseman and the Ben Nevis from Archangel No. 1.
In addition to these continuous bottling series, Signatory Vintage also has series that appear less frequently, such as the Single Cask Seasons . Although the bottler focusses mainly on single malts, a grain whisky is also released from time to time in Signatory Vintage's Single Grain Collection.
