Production, sensory, service, label, and legal terms defined plainly

Which words on a label are fixed by a rule?

Some words on a bottle have to be earned. A producer who prints them is making a claim a regulator has defined, and a claim that can be checked.

• Age statement. A number of years means barrel time, and it counts the youngest spirit in the bottle rather than the oldest.
• Straight. On an American whiskey it adds two years in charred new oak and removes the permission to add colouring or flavouring. What straight adds to a rye works it through.
• Bottled in bond. One distilling season, one distillery, four years in a federally supervised warehouse, bottled at exactly 50 percent. The four words guarantee all of it.
• Blended. It means different things in different countries, and on an American label it is the one designation that may hold neutral spirits. How much of a blend is whiskey.

Which words on a label mean nothing?

Small batch, handcrafted and premium have no fixed meaning in most jurisdictions, so none of them is defined here. Giving them an entry would imply a precision they do not have.

Where one of those words does have a legal definition somewhere, it belongs with the rule that defines it, named jurisdiction and date attached.

Why the same word means two different things

Drinks vocabulary grew up in several countries at once, so a word can carry one meaning under one country's rules and another meaning under the next.

Grain means one thing in a Scotch category and another in an American mash bill. Single names a distillery in Scotland and a barrel almost everywhere else. Blended counts neutral spirits in the United States, distilleries in Scotland, and varieties in Ireland.

Words that describe a process, not a promise

Some terms are accurate and still tell you nothing about quality. Chill filtered, cask strength, non chill filtered and pot still all describe something real that was done to the liquid.

Each is a production choice with a trade-off rather than a mark of care. Knowing what the choice does is more useful than knowing which side of it a producer picked.