grants whisky
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Topic: grants whisky
Posted By: jamie
Subject: grants whisky
Date Posted: 04.06.2007 at 00:28
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can anyone help me? I bought a bottle of grants family reserve in singapore and noticed the % was 43 instead of the normal 40 found on bottles in the uk. Was intrested in why this was. ------------- jamie |
Replies:
Posted By: eric m
Date Posted: 04.06.2007 at 10:34
According to EEC regulations inside the Union the maximum alcohollevel for a standard bottle is 40% only in duty free shops and outside Europe this level can be higher.Why it is done so i don`t know maybe the brussels burocrats are concerned of our health !Eric.
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Posted By: MacMartin
Date Posted: 10.06.2007 at 15:28
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Sorry say this ericm but that's nonsense. If your statement was true around 80% of all malts would be illegal. There is a minimum level of alcohol for whisky, and that level is 40% - it's perfectly legal to bottle at any strength above that. It's true that some producers/bottlers bottle their whisky at a higher strength for the duty-free marked, since it's traditionally been tax-free (and still is in Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and other non-EU states) and therefore not necessary to water the whisky down - Glenfiddich does this with their malts. |
Posted By: eric m
Date Posted: 11.06.2007 at 15:53
| MacMartin,i wish it was nonsense but the EEC legislation wants to ban alcohollevels higher than 40% for their own market,it is a matter of years that this level is standard.Only for duty free it will be a bit higher.The present situation they allow it but eventually they get their way(another example is to forbid any non-pasturized cheese,they also work on a law to stop that too!).And if i were wrong why does my neighbour has to smuggle a litchibrandy(80%)from Hong Kong into the Netherlands for me if it is legal to bring it with you?If you know other reasons why i`m eager to hear them from you.Greetings Eric m. |
Posted By: whiskyportal
Date Posted: 11.06.2007 at 23:19
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Well, not much from the EEC would surprise me, but here in Denmark you can enter any store selling whisky and find whiskies bottled at all kind of strengths - watered down to 40/43/46% (or even 45,8% as is the case for the standard Talisker 10YO) or cask strength. At least in Denmark you will find no laws stating that specific levels of alcohol should be used - you just pay the duty bsed on the amount of pure alcohol in the bottle.
And exactly the duty is the reason for some whiskies to be bottled at 40%. It's the lowest level of alcohol you can have in the bottle and still call the content whisky, but the duty will be minimised - resulting in lower retail price.
I believe that more and more single malts are bottled at 43 or 46%. And all the unchillfiltered bottlings I have seen myself so far (not claiming it will be true for all unchillfiltered) has been bottled at at least 46% to avoid cloudiness in the bottle at low temperatures. ------------- Dennis Klindrup http://www.whiskyportal.com - The Whisky Portal |
Posted By: eric m
Date Posted: 12.06.2007 at 09:36
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It`s all true what you say i still can get bottles of 50% over here too,but the EEC ,so concerned about our health is busy with legislation to make 40% max a standard in Europe. it will be over a few years that it`s over.I`ll try to dig an article i read about it up and if not i`m gonna ask Brussels . |
.Greetings Eric m.Posted By: MacMartin
Date Posted: 13.06.2007 at 23:18
Wanting to ban is something quite different than it being a rule that as you stated in you first forumpost on this thread. Some politicians always want's to hinder trade. But at the present time there is no such law, and you can, in all EU member states, purchase cask strength whisky at any whiskyshop, also in Holland. As for your neighboor I haven't got a clue why he felt he needed to smuggle it. On the pages of the Dutch Customs & Excise there are nothing stated about an upper limit on spirits - a limit that my country (Norway) has. Here anything above 60% is considered narcotics. This limit also existed in neighbouring Sweden until thet joined th EU in 1994. |
Posted By: eric m
Date Posted: 14.06.2007 at 09:24
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Before the EEC makes a law they already try to reach companies to let them know that new legislation is coming so they can be prepared an example is their smoking law,in the U.K. and Ireland you are not allowed to smoke in a pub or on your workspot while over here it`s no problem (YET!).I thougt that in 2010 smoking will be forbidden everywhere and countries decide for themselves a date, so by the time that it is a law every country already is smokefree.It depends on the willingness of national parlements how fast they accept the law.Your country is supposed to be a bit of a dissident state(not my words |
)so it will take perhaps some more time for you but it will come.Eric m.Posted By: jamie
Date Posted: 25.06.2007 at 22:52
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A friend of mine recently gave me a very old bottle of johnnie walker it looks about 20 years old. The size of the bottle says 13 and a third FL.OZS and it says 70 proof (35%). As i always thought the minimum% of scotch was 40% i wondered if this was a new rule. can anyone help? ------------- jamie |
Posted By: MacMartin
Date Posted: 27.06.2007 at 17:40
| 70 proof equals 40% alc. vol. when using British proof. 70 proof US would equal 35%. |
Posted By: eric m
Date Posted: 28.06.2007 at 11:56
| What is exactly the difference between the Imperial and the American system?Eric. |
Posted By: TNbourbon
Date Posted: 30.06.2007 at 02:59
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Well, I can't find a reliable citation for it to link to, but under the old Sykes proof system, 114 proof equaled today's U.S. 100 proof (or, 50% abv.)
There still are remnants of it here and there -- take, for example, the Old Grand-Dad 114 bourbon bottling still produced, now by the Jim Beam company. In every country that I know of -- certainly, it's true here in the U.S., which explains Jack Daniel's recent reduction to 80 proof -- taxes are based on alcohol content. Thus, the lower the content the lower the taxes -- and the more profit made by the producer (because the price, you know, doesn't go down with the proof) -- per bottle. ------------- Tim |
Posted By: tdevil
Date Posted: 22.12.2007 at 23:48
| under the (very) old customs procedures in the UK, proof spirit was that concentration of alcohol that just sustained combustion of gunpowder. if a line of gunpowder wet with the liquid being tested continued to burn, then the liquid was "proved" and was subject to excise. this actually equated to approximately 57.2% alcohol and is accepted as "proof strength" in th UK. the americans, who just HAVE to be different (note the US gallon (3.79 litres) vs the imperial gallon (4.55 litres), the "short ton" (2000 lb) vs the ton (2240 lb - which is actually very close to the metric tonne (2204 lb)), decreed that proof spirit is 50%. hence the confusion |