Independent bottlings

I once met a man who was a member of a whisky club, this was in the days I was myself fairly new to whisky, who assured me independent bottlings were always superior to the standard distillery bottlings. I strongly disagreed with the man. I guess I still do, although I can see his point.
A standard bottling is created in a totally different way from an independent bottling. The distillery is looking for consistency, so they use their entire stock of casks to compose the same (or very much the same) whisky every time. Their brand is associated with a specific taste, and they have to reproduce this every time. Sometimes they make a limited or exclusive series, which is unique but in the general direction of their standard product.
An independent bottling is unique every time. The independent bottler has a much more limited stock of casks from any given distillery and usually bottles one cask at a time. This bottling's quality depends on that one or two casks it was made from, so there is no way of balancing a lower quality cask with a better one. Of course (most) independent bottlers select the casks, they want to bottle for quality, (yes some will just bottle anything).
So it seems reasonable to conclude that a standard distillery bottling has a consistent quality, and an independent bottling can be better or worse, depending on the casks they bottled.
As a connoisseur a standard bottling is good, but since it is the same every time, it seems more interesting to explore the wild variety of a plethora of independent bottlings. Sometimes they may disappoint, but there is also the very real possibility of finding a hidden gem.

The man from the whisky club claimed independent bottlers would only buy the high quality casks from distilleries and therefore each of their bottles would be better than the distiller's. It seems highly unlikely to me a distillery would sell only their best casks to an independent bottler. Furthermore, this claim relies on the fact that bottler's would buy matured casks from the distillers. Most of the time it works the other way around. Bottlers, typically blenders, have filling contracts with distilleries, or buy unmatured casks, and only years of maturing will prove it to be bad, average, good or perhaps even great. Douglas Laing co., as a blender, has filling contracts with distilleries, and opts to bottle some exceptionally good casks as single malts, and the rest goes to the blending. Gordon & MacPhail even mature most of the casks they buy in their own warehouses.
A bottler isn't always assured of getting only the best of casks, and so he faces a challenge : what to do with casks that are sub par? As I already mentioned, some bottler may deal with this challenge by ignoring it and bottling it anyway. Others, such as Douglas Laing, just use these for their blend, and others still, such as Gordon & MacPhail, have large enough stocks and the know-how to combine several casks to get a good quality result.

If you want to buy an independent bottling, you as a consumer face a wager, will this bottling be worth the price you pay for it? There aren't many guidelines. Not much on a whisky's label can tell you about what you will find inside. Distillery? If it's only one or two casks they are no way guaranteed to taste anything like the distillery's standard. Age? Given that every cask reaches a peak in quality, and that this peak is different for every cask, age is no useful guideline at all. Vintage? Is of absolutely no consequence. The type of cask may give you some general idea, but doesn't assure quality at all. In the end you'll have to rely on the bottler. Is he committed to bringing high quality products to the market, or is he just interested in another sale. Knowing how the bottler operates helps, but nothing beats experience. If a bottler hasn't let you down, time after time, it's not likely you're going to get rubbish the next time. It all comes down to reputation.

Lastly :
I want to note that some distilleries' standard bottlings are so varied that it becomes hard for the customer to discern a typical taste or nose for that distillery, I'm thinking of Bruichladdich, Glenmorangie, etc. Whether this is commercially a wise move, only time will tell.

Macallan vs. Glenfarclas

Maturing exclusively on first-fill sherry casks, something both Macallan and Glenfarclas do. Or rather did. Macallan has abandoned this practice in starting its fine oak series. Glenfarclas, for now, remains adamant in the face of more expenses for the Spanish wood. In an article I read recently, Mr. John Grant of Glenfarclas claimed he would continue his maturation policy.
What should we make of this?
Macallan's move was, at best, clumsy, from a communications point of view. If you advocate first-fill sherry cask maturation to be the one and only true way of maturing whisky, for years, it is rather silly to suddenly switch to bourbon casks. But the Fine Oak is a testament to the know how of Macallan. Yet it also revealed how Macallan has been rather hypocritical, since all of a sudden they seem to be able to market 30 year old Macallan matured in bourbon casks. On the other hand it appears this hypocrisy has allowed them to make the switch. A luxury which perhaps Glenfarclas does not have. Mr. Grant's determination to continue exclusive sherry cask maturation may be in part inspired by the inability to make the switch.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. Will Macallan repent, and return to sherry casks because it is losing its fans, despite the quality of its new line. Or will Glenfarclas succumb under the economic pressure of the cheaper Bourbon casks. Or will both flourish? The last is not entirely unlikely, since whisky still is booming, its market still has a lot of potential growth.
Perhaps in a few years the peat hype will be replaced by the sherry hype, and then Glenfarclas will reap the rewards, although Macallan is probably investing in enough sherry casks to keep all options open, after all, that just seems to be the smart thing to do.

Just Finish

In recent years whisky makers have been experimenting with finishes, i.e. maturing a whisky on a different cask for a relatively short period of time. The types of cask used for finishes are most often not traditionally used for maturing whisky : rum barrels, cognac, champagne, port, ... anything seems crazy enough to add a weird twist in the end. This practice is met with quite a bit of scepticism from malt lovers and connoisseurs, because it seems whisky makers will do anything to sell their product.
It indeed seems a strange idea to do something so novel in an industry which prides itself for its loyalty to traditions and craftsmanship. Whisky marketing always focuses on the years of slowly maturing, on the old-fashioned way in which their malts were distilled, on quality rather than quantity.
But the truth is that the whisky industry, although its image may be old-fashioned, must survive in a modern-day market, where efficiency and profitability are the key words. And the reality of marketing a malt is quite daunting. It requires not only the skill of making a good product, but also to accurately guess what the demand on that market will be by the time the spirit has matured enough, which can easily be a decade from now.
The economic forces cause new trends in the whisky market. One such trend is that official distillery bottlings become younger. Ardbeg Very Young, Still Young and Almost There are such examples, another trend is that whisky is less and less matured on expensive casks, such as Sherry casks. Macallan, for instance, the malt that traditionally was always matured on sherry casks, now switched to their 'fine oak' series, which is a blend of their Bourbon and Sherry oak maturations. Another trend is to sell the stuff for more money, just pop to your favourite shop and compare the current prices to what they charged a few years back, for the same bottle.
I believe that wood finishes are also a product largely inspired by economic forces. Firstly it allows you to mature the whisky on a relatively cheap cask, and then differentiate it, by adding the effect of a more expensive cask at the end. Secondly it allows you to tailor for the current demand. What you didn't know ten years ago, you may know now, and after maturing your product a finish could allow you to then change your product in the direction of what is popular today. Furthermore a finish allows you to bring more people to try and appreciate your whisky, by associating it with a drink that is popular to non-whisky drinkers. If you enjoy a claret wine, you might be curious what a whisky matured on a claret cask tastes like, even though you don't really care about whisky. Lastly it is something new and exciting to those who already know their way around the whisky world.
So there is a lot to be said for a wood finish. I am always eager to try these, and see how it affects the malt. Currently there is still a lot of experimenting going on, and some of them turn out bad, others turn out magnificent. In several years finishes will still be around, but distillers will have found out which are successful, and which aren't, and they mill be used with more consideration and moderation, and I am sure the product will benefit from it. Nevertheless, the classic maturation will not be wiped away, especially because of the traditional image the whisky industry still upholds.
We should embrace the finishes with an open mind, and give earnest feedback of how we like it to those who make it. If its no good they should know it, and if it turns out to be great, they should definitely know it. This can only help to make whisky a more accessible, yet highly qualitative product, which can be enjoyed by many.