Douglas Laing

Family-owned, Glasgow-based independent bottler, established in 1948.

Until 2013 brothers Fred and Stewart Laing worked together, heading up the family bottling company, before deciding to split the company’s assets and go their separate ways. Douglas Laing’s daughter Cara joined her father, bringing with her significant Scotch whisky experience, having acted as global brand manager for Jura single malt, before serving as marketing manager for Bowmore and Glen Garioch. Cara is the third generation of the Laing family to be involved with the company, which was founded in 1948 by her grandfather, Fred Douglas Laing, who blended his own whisky and established a fillings programme with many Scottish distilleries, a practice which continues to this day. Fred Laing became a trainee employee with Whyte & Mackay Distillers in his native Glasgow after leaving school, going on to work with White Horse Distillers before joining his father and brother Stewart in the family firm in 1972. Their father died in 1982. Over the years, the focus of the business changed from exporting blends to bottling single malts, principally for the UK market. In July 2017 Douglas Laing & Co revealed plans to build its own £10.7m distillery in Glasgow and, in October 2019, it announced the acquisition of tiny Perthshire malt distillery Strathearn.