There is a question I like to ask at whisky festivals, and which I used extensively at this year’s Independent Spirits Festival. Not what is your best seller, or what should I try first. But: what are you excited about today? What would you choose to drink?

The answers tell you everything. Distillery representatives — warm, knowledgeable, often genuinely passionate — tend to navigate toward the newest release or the core range stalwart. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is usually a pause, a small recalibration, before the answer comes. Independent Bottlers are different. Perhaps it is not a chance that I am picking up from where I left off before my editorial break. Ask an Independent Bottler the same question, and the answer arrives before you have finished asking it.

I had been at the Little Brown Dog stand for perhaps an hour into this year’s Independent Spirits Festival in Leith. I already knew their whisky — their Drookit Dug remains one of the best quality-to-price bottles I have come across — but I had never met Andrew Smith, one of the two people behind the brand. So I asked my question. What followed was less a sales conversation than two people talking about whisky they love, which is how I ended up trying the 2014 Little Brown Dog Longmorn I review today, a whisky I had no intention of buying, and leaving with a bottle under my arm.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Independent Spirits Festival

The festival is the brainchild of Roy Duff of Aqvavitae and whisky writer David Stirk, who handles the organisational heavy lifting — together with a team of volunteers who clearly love what they are doing. I missed the 2025 edition, but the whisky grapevine was unanimous enough that I used some hard-earned vacation days to make the 2026 edition.

Fifty-nine exhibitors. Not just independent bottlers but independent distillers, small producers, people who have staked something personal on what is in the glass. The atmosphere that follows from that is hard to manufacture. The sentence I heard most across the two days was from fellow whisky fans was some version of: have you tried X from stand Y? You need to go there now. No gatekeeping. Just the particular happiness of people who want to share something good with whoever happens to be nearby. That atmosphere is not incidental to what independent bottlers do. It is an expression of it.

Great whisky comes with a range of personalities

I spent a good amount of the Independent Spirits Festival following the suggestions of whisky pals and sharing my own. As usual, I tried less than a third of what I wanted to sample. So much great whisky, so little time — four hours pass in the blink of an eye when you are having fun.

There is little question that Independent Bottlers bring quality to the table. You will commonly hear that they let whisky fans experience a different side of distilleries’ official bottlings. But it goes beyond this. IBs take down the curtain of uniformity which distilleries are usually bound by and show us what is under the hood. They remove that monolithic style stamp which distilleries, especially those with mass market ambitions, crave: a recognisable, unique character functional — when it works — to drive loyalty and recognition.

That style is the result of balancing the influence of hundreds of decisions, from distillation to cask and ageing, through the work of master distillers and blenders. And while a house style can be truly great when done right, it builds a distance between the aficionado and the whisky. We rarely get to experience the multiple facets of a distillery — how the range of flavours in an individual cask gives rise to that personality, how a certain spirit behaves in different wood, and so on.

Independent Bottlers are not bound by that. They build their reputation by knowing their casks individually, making small bets — some of which will be merely good, some exceptional. And by doing so, they make whisky more real. Less of a standardised product and more of the artisanal, batch-driven creation pot still distilled whisky truly is.

Is it the whisky or the people?

All that comes with another kind of personality — that of the independent bottler themselves. When I speak with people employed by distilleries, I always sense a level of control in the answers. Even the most warm and friendly person betrays a layer of company messaging they need to stay within. The whisky industry is significantly better at openness than many others, but it is still there.

Independent bottlers do not need those filters. The work they put into selecting casks, choosing how to age them and when to bottle them is what creates their reputation. More often than not, you can ask them why they chose to bottle something, and they will tell you. That level of openness is refreshing and reveals a great deal about the person putting their passion into the glass.

As I mentioned, one of the things I like to do at festivals is ask exhibitors what they would drink from what is available. Distilleries often point you to their core range or newest release. Independent bottlers are different: often they will point to something less popular with the crowd but personally meaningful to them. Which brings me back to Andrew Smith, and a bottle I had no intention of buying.

Little Brown Dog

Little Brown Dog was started by Andrew Smith and Chris Reid in 2018. The name takes inspiration from Andrew’s beloved dog — nicknamed the little brown dog — who passed away in 2022 aged 15, and who lives on as the silhouette on every bottle they release. As a dog lover myself, the name alone had already intrigued me. But it was a few of their whiskies I had managed to try before the festival that sold me. Their Drookit Dug — Wet Dog in Scots — remains one of the best quality-to-price ratio bottles I have found. Unfortunately, calling the availability of their products outside the UK minimal is an understatement.

So they were a must-visit stand for me at the Independent Spirits Festival. When I got to them, I had a short chat with Andrew and asked my question: what was he excited about? The tone quickly became that of a whisky lover talking to a fellow fan about something they genuinely enjoy. He was more than happy to share his thinking and offer me a taste of the Longmorn and a very intriguing, fully white Port matured, Braeval – a very unique take on a whisky unavailable as an original bottling. Both impressive. But even in the sensory overload of the festival — coming after quite a few drams already — the Longmorn stood out. I did not take long to decide I was taking one home.

Little Brown Dog Longmorn 2014, 11 year old

Tasting notes

Colour: Very pale gold — surprisingly so for a first-fill cask.

Nose: The colour might be shy, yet the nose is anything but. Very buttery and creamy, slightly herbaceous — fresh meadow grass, like a fantastic artisanal butter. Coconut and cocoa butter. A lot of vanilla, a touch of ginger powder. Yellow fruit: peaches, loquats. Then floral honey, lily of the valley, a little mandarin rind, caramel. The longer it stays in the glass, the more it transforms. With water, the butteriness tones down and gives more space to fruity, floral and spicy notes — a little less powerful, but even more elegant.

Taste & finish: At almost 60% it is unsurprisingly warm when tasted neat. The texture is velvety. The butter is still there, but together with cereal malt notes it transforms into a fruit-filled Danish pastry. Spice, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, caramel, a little liquorice root, a touch of lemon. A very faint bitter edge — enough to break the creamy sweetness without being overbearing. The finish is very long, a little drying. Sweeter and buttery at first, then spicy, ending on floral lily of the valley and honeysuckle. With water the texture becomes richly mouth-coating, and fresh grass notes add a further layer of complexity.

Score: 9/10

This is a complex, elegant and seductive dram. One of those whiskies you can spend an evening with, discovering how it changes in the glass and how it behaves with water, always retaining its richness. I almost stopped myself at 9, but I would have underscored it.

I love the label’s quiet humour — made to resemble a very well known butter brand, in knowing reference to how buttery this whisky is. It will be hard to make this bottle last. I would never have bought this bottle without the quick chat with Andrew at the festival. And if I see him again, I will be sure to thank him for it.

Which is, in the end, exactly the point. Independent bottlers do not just offer a different angle on whisky. They collapse the distance between the person who chose the cask and the person drinking it. The whisky in this bottle is exceptional. But the reason it is in my cabinet, and not still on the shelf at the festival, is Andrew Smith — his enthusiasm, his directness, and a shared love of dogs.

That is what independent bottlers do that no official release can replicate. And that is why, whisky quality aside, we keep coming back to them.