An interesting take on whiskies from yester-year ! (Patreon)

When Whisky Was Exciting

Today's whisky bottle labels are boring. There, I've said it; do your worst. They are mostly all text, with very few containing illustrations, and as you look at the rows of bottles displayed on public house gantries there's very little to differentiate one from another, apart from the name of the whisky. It wasn't always like this. Back in the good old days, in the Victorian period, whisky bottle labels were colourful and full of all manner of pictures, many with a strong Scottish theme. There were Highlanders in kilts wielding broadswords, thistles and mountains and poet Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott and almost anything you can think of that may be associated with Scotland. Such a contrast to the boring labels that blight today's Scottish whisky industry. The idea behind using a bottle label, or indeed a label for any container, was obviously to identify your product, so that everyone knew what was in the bottle. It also allowed consumers who were familiar with your product to easily identify it. A good stand-out bottle label also attracted potential consumers who had never tried your whisky but were intrigued by the bottle label and so decided to give it a try. Be in no doubt, bottle labels are important. So why, then, are today's whisky bottle labels lacking in any stand-out quality and lining pub gantry shelves like peas in a pod? There does seem to be some sort of trend in the whisky industry to make their product look somehow clinical and fresh from a laboratory, as if luring the customer into thinking he or she is trying a spirit not yet fully released, perhaps some sort of trial batch of which they are permitted to have a wee sample. I just think it's all very boring. So let's have a look at just how exciting whisky once was, courtesy of whisky bottle labels that were registered as trade marks. Although these pictorial labels, taken directly from Trade Marks Journals, are in black and white, the actual bottle labels were in full colour, and it's not difficult to imagine just how colourful the bottles, and pub gantries must once have looked.