Pure Malt: the True Meaning Behind These Whisky Term

When you look at whisky labels, alongside Single Malt and Blended Malt you’ll sometimes see the terms Pure Malt or Vatted Malt. Names that can raise a few questions. We dug into what they mean in this How to Whisky.

Pure malt, or Vatted Malt, sounds like a term that promises something pristine and special. The word “pure” suggests a single, untainted source, but the reality is a bit more nuanced.

In principle, Pure Malt does come from a single source, just like Single Malt. The difference lies in what “source” means for each term.

According to whisky regulations, the Scotch Whisky Association is clear: Single Malt whisky is always distilled from malted barley and comes from one distillery.

Pure Malt sits close to those rules. It’s still a whisky made solely from malted barley. The nuance is that it doesn’t come exclusively from a single distillery.

So it’s always a composition, even if the name suggests something unblended. Sound familiar? It might.

For a long time, Pure Malt was the unofficial term for Blended Malt whisky. Another term you might encounter instead of Pure Malt is Vatted Malt, which means the same thing.

That label is older than Pure Malt and refers to the process of marrying these whiskies in large vats. In practice, “vatted malt” was often used by aficionados, while “pure malt” caught on more with consumers.

Despite its historical value, “vatted malt” no longer appears on official Scotch labels today. It’s a catch-all term enthusiasts mostly encounter when exploring older bottlings or the history of whisky blending techniques.

Growing confusion between pure malt, vatted malt, and single malt pushed the Scotch Whisky Association to provide clarity. In 2009 they established that only one term may be used officially: blended malt. Whisky made from malt whiskies sourced from more than one distillery has, since then, automatically fallen into this category. Blended malt always contains only malt whisky no grain whisky.

That decision put an end to decades of terminological chaos. From that moment on, the rule of thumb has been:

Vatted malt is pure malt, and both are blended malt: with blended malt being the only official term.