John Dewar, a wine and spirits shop and two sons.

Dewar’s began as a shop. In 1846 John Dewar opened a wine and spirits business on the High Street in Perth, the Scotch whisky reference site scotchwhisky.com says, after working in his uncle’s drinks trade, first as a cellarman and then as a partner, according to Whisky Magazine. In the 1860s he began blending his own whisky, at a time when what was then called “mixture whisky” was still little known in the town, scotchwhisky.com says. The 1846 date has stayed at the centre of the brand ever since; it is printed on the bottles and carried in the line “True Scotch Since 1846.”

In 1880 the business passed to his sons, John Alexander Dewar and Thomas “Tommy” Dewar, and in 1886 it took the name John Dewar & Sons. The brothers split the work. John Alexander stayed in Perth, where Difford’s Guide says he became Lord Provost in 1893; he later sat as MP for Inverness-shire and was made Baron Forteviot in 1917, English Wikipedia says. Tommy carried the name to London and overseas. Between 1892 and 1894 he travelled through 26 countries, and his journal was published by Chatto & Windus in 1894 as A Ramble Round the Globe. He became Sheriff of London in 1897, was knighted in 1902 and was made Baron Dewar in 1919, English Wikipedia says.

The firm received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria in 1893, scotchwhisky.com says, and the brothers built their own distillery. Having leased the Tullymet distillery, the company built Aberfeldy on the south bank of the Tay in Perthshire; English Wikipedia, citing Charles Maclean’s Whiskypedia, says it was founded in 1896 and opened in 1898. Aberfeldy remains the largest malt component in the Dewar’s blend, English Wikipedia says.

White Label, a moving picture and a long line of blenders.

The flagship came at the end of the century. Dewar’s White Label was created in 1899 by the company’s first master blender, A. J. Cameron, English Wikipedia and scotchwhisky.com say, and it became its best-selling whisky. The brand also made an early mark in advertising: a short film made for Dewar’s in 1898, It’s Scotch!, is often cited as the first moving-picture advertisement, English Wikipedia says, citing the British Film Institute and Judy Cornes’s history Alcohol in the Movies. Dewar’s won a gold medal at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, and in 1909 it donated the Dewar Shield, still the trophy of the premier rugby union competition in Victoria, Australia, English Wikipedia says.

The house style rests on a step Dewar’s calls double ageing: after blending, the whisky goes back into oak casks to marry before bottling, a process Forbes described in 2019. Blending has passed through a short line of hands. Tom Aitken created the 12-year-old, and in 2003 the 18-year-old and Signature, English Wikipedia says. Stephanie Macleod, who joined in 1998 and trained as blender designate from 2003, became master blender in 2006 — the seventh to hold the post and the first woman, Tales of the Cocktail and the University of Strathclyde say. She won Master Blender of the Year at the International Whisky Competition in June 2023, Forbes reported, and in March 2023 Bacardi made her director of blending for its Scotch whiskies, Whisky Magazine reported.

The range has widened around White Label. scotchwhisky.com lists Highlander Honey in 2013, which it calls the brand’s first flavoured Scotch, and Scratched Cask in 2015; English Wikipedia lists a run of eight-year-old cask finishes from 2019, including Caribbean Smooth, finished in rum casks, and Japanese Smooth, finished in Mizunara oak.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all blended Scotch whiskies: Dewar’s, J&B, Ballantine’s, Grant’s, Bell’s, Teacher’s and Cutty Sark. Blended Scotch brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s or merchant’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a hotel bar.

A blended Scotch brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single distillery than by a label, a name and the style of the blend, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its blending and bottling or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whisky is actually blended and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whisky is blended and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From the Distillers Company to Bacardi, and two redesigns.

The family firm did not stay independent. In 1925 John Dewar & Sons merged into the Distillers Company Ltd, alongside its partner Buchanan’s, scotchwhisky.com and English Wikipedia say. In 1986 Guinness bought the Distillers Company, which became United Distillers, and in 1997 Guinness and Grand Metropolitan merged to form Diageo. In 1998 Diageo sold Dewar’s, together with Bombay gin, to Bacardi, The New York Times reported on 31 March 1998. Under Bacardi, John Dewar & Sons runs five Scotch distilleries — Aberfeldy, Aultmore, Craigellachie, Macduff and Royal Brackla — and also owns the William Lawson’s blend, English Wikipedia says. Bacardi opened Dewar’s World of Whisky, a visitor centre at Aberfeldy, in 2000, and later expanded its blending site in Glasgow and built a maturation site at Poniel, scotchwhisky.com says.

Two packaging projects shaped the look on the shelf today. In September 2010 Dewar’s introduced bottles designed by the New York agency Spring Design Partners and made in Scotland by the glassmaker O-I, with a “wave” cut through the label to make a window onto the whisky; every bottle carried the year 1846 and John Dewar’s signature, FoodIngredientsFirst reported. In April 2014 the packaging agency Stranger & Stranger overhauled the whole range with new bottle shapes, gift boxes, labels, bespoke typefaces and a new visual identity, Dexigner reported. The most visible detail, according to the trade press, was a Celtic “truth knot” embossed in the glass: three interlocking Ds for John Dewar and his sons John Alexander and Tommy. The agency’s managing director said the team had gone “back to the origins of the brand.” For a closer look at the lettering, see our guide to the Dewar’s font.

One practical note: “Dewar’s” is also the name of an unrelated American candy shop, so the apostrophe and the Perth link matter when searching for the whisky.

For a design guide, Dewar’s shows how a blend can carry a founding date, a signature and a family monogram as its identity, and how a knot of three letters can say “father and sons” without a word. Compare The Famous Grouse, another Perth blend, and Chivas Regal, the Aberdeen blend of the same era. For this guide we use Perth navy, Highland red and cask amber with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Dewar’s’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.