Growing pains: comparing countries’ bids to protect their whisky

What makes one whisky’s bid for a protected identity better than, or preferable to, another’s?

In March, the Japan Spirits & Liquors Makers Association (JSLMA) announced its intention to apply for a geographical indication (GI) for Japanese whisky. It follows the organisation’s introduction of new labelling standards for its members in 2021, which stated a ‘Japanese whisky’ had to be 100 per cent distilled, aged and bottled in Japan. On revealing its GI ambitions, the JSLMA also unveiled a new logo which members who meet the requisite standards can use on their labels. 

While membership of the JSLMA is of course voluntary, the organisation has clout, with industry giants Suntory Global Spirits and Nikka among its ranks.

Efforts to introduce legally binding standards for Japanese whisky — a sector that has been plagued by confusion, obfuscation and misinformation — have been met with wide support from industry. It spells good news for consumers too. While auction prices may be cooling (Whiskystats’ February 2025 report says auction sales of Japanese whisky were down by 3.7 per cent), international interest in the country’s whiskies is still on the rise. 

New distilleries have been cropping up at a brisk pace over the past decade. Names such as Komoro, Sakurao and Ontake have gained international traction, further building the country’s profile and introducing new names to consumers beyond staples such as Nikka, Yamazaki and Fuji-Gotemba. It’s a prime time for distillers to unite and formalise. 

The international whisky community has voiced its full-throated support for the JSLMA’s bid to improve quality, increase transparency, and protect Japanese whisky’s reputation. But you can’t always count on kindness from your peers — or even your neighbours.

In February, the English Whisky Guild announced its application for a GI for English whisky had entered the consultation stage. It’s an important step for the guild and its members in their mission to formalise the English whisky category, but prompted a less than cordial reaction from the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA). Within hours, the organisation leapt forth to denigrate the English application based on how it would define single malt whisky. In Scotland, this designation means the whisky has been fully produced on one site, from mashing to maturation. In the English whisky GI, a single malt only needs to be distilled on one site; the wash could be produced elsewhere, for example at a partner brewery.

The SWA claims this caveat robs single malt whisky of its necessary “connection to place” and that Scotch single malts would be damaged by association. Wielding the significant cultural (and monetary) value of Scotch whisky to the UK, the SWA concluded the English whisky GI should be thrown out. Its vociferous criticism elicited a pledge from the UK Treasury that the definition of single malt would not be “watered down” by the proposals. Notable whisky commentators have also publicly backed the SWA’s argument.

While English distillers would not have to produce their wash on-site, the proposed regulations have another stipulation which, to some minds, will actually enhance a whisky’s connection to place compared with Scotch: English whisky would have to be made with UK-grown grain. It’s a subject on which the Scotch Whisky Regulations are notably quiet, nor was it included in the Welsh whisky GI which gained UK government approval in July 2023.

Partnerships with local breweries arguably give English whiskies an equal “connection to place”. England’s craft brewing industry remains world-famous and a collaboration stands to make both industries more prosperous and innovative.

I appreciate the assertion that distance in any part of the production process could decrease quality or leave a door open for less scrupulous operators. However, just because distilleries can work that way doesn’t mean they will. Plenty of English distilleries are already producing fully on one site — the Lakes Distillery, Cooper King, Copper Rivet, White Peak, the English Distillery and the Cotswolds Distillery, to name a few. The wheat will soon sort itself from the chaff.

Although it had clout in the corridors of power, the SWA’s heavy-handed attack may come to have a different effect on the general public. People love an underdog, and English distillers have come back fighting. Figures such as Seb Heeley, co-founder at the Spirit of Manchester Distillery, and Tagore Ramoutar, co-founder of The Oxford Artisan Distillery (now Fielden Whisky), have seized the proffered spotlight and used it to highlight and educate. English whisky has never been so visible.

Also, in case anyone missed it: in March, Scottish blending house Woven Whisky launched Pastures New, a first-of-its-kind blend of English whiskies. The aggressive opposition of some in the Scotch camp to the English GI application is because of its differences from the Scotch Whisky Regulations, but it is precisely those differences that make English whisky so exciting and should be celebrated. Homogeneity will not produce whiskies with a “sense of place”.

For another great example of this, look to the United States. In December 2024, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved an application by the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission to establish American single malt as a protected whiskey category. In common with the proposed English whisky standards, American single malt must be distilled at one distillery but there’s no stipulation that mashing and fermentation take place on the same site. 

The commission, which has founding members including Westward Whiskey, Balcones Distilling and Virginia Distilling Company, has been fighting since 2016 for the ratification of these standards. As with the Japanese and English standards they offer legal protection, quality assurance and greater transparency, but they also lay the groundwork for something transformation: a national whisky identity. There’s sufficient distance from the well-trodden rules of Scotch for American single malts to retain an essential ‘Americanness’, while simultaneously allowing individual distilleries creative freedom. This can only serve to strengthen the American whiskey industry — a fact with which the English Whisky Guild seems to concur.