What is "single malt scotch"

n. Scotch made only from the malted barley of a single distillery, unblended with other scotches.

Single malt Scotch is single malt whisky made in Scotland. To be a single malt scotch the whisky must have been distilled at a single distillery using a pot still distillation process and made from a mash of malted grain. In Scotland, the only grain allowed to be used in a single malt whisky is barley. As with any Scotch whisky, a single malt Scotch must be distilled in Scotland and matured in oak casks in Scotland for at least three years. (Most single malts are matured longer.)

• "Malt" indicates that the whisky is distilled from a "malted" grain. Several types of grains can be malted (for example, barley, rye and wheat are all grains which can be malted); however, in the case of single malt Scotch, barley is always the only grain used.
• "Single" indicates that all the spirits in the bottle come from a single distillery. Bottlings containing malt whisky from multiple distilleries are called " blended malt".

Until the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (SWR 2009), the word "blended" only appeared (in the context of Scotch whisky) on bottles of whisky that contained a mixture of both barley and non-barley grain whisky, but this is no longer the case. Under the terminology established by the SWR 2009, a "blended malt Scotch whisky" is a mixture of single malt Scotch whiskies, not a mixture of malted barley whisky and non-barley whisky; those are called "blended Scotch whisky", without the word "malt". The term "blended malt" replaced "vatted malt" used under the prior labelling conventions.

The age statement on a bottle of single malt Scotch is the number of years the whisky spent maturing in casks. Very few whiskies are bottled from a single cask, and the mixing of spirits with different amounts of ageing is allowed; the age statement reflects the age of the youngest whisky in the mix.