Most Scottish souvenirs end their days in a drawer — a fridge magnet, a scrap of tartan, a wee plastic Nessie. We wanted to make something you would actually want to keep, and want to open: a bottle of blended malt Scotch whisky that carries a genuine piece of Scotland’s art and history on its label.
These aren’t stock photos or clip art. The canvas label on almost every bottle in our Iconic Scotland and Famous Scots collections is a real oil painting — named artist, dated, and in most cases reproduced with the express permission of the National Galleries of Scotland. It’s a Scottish keepsake with a story in every glass.
Scotland’s national art, on a bottle
We worked with the National Galleries of Scotland so that each label could reproduce an original work from the nation’s collection. The result is a small, drinkable gallery: landscapes that framed our history and portraits of the people who shaped it, printed on a tactile canvas label and wrapped around a bottle of blended malt. When the whisky is gone, the bottle stays — which is rather the point of a keepsake.
Iconic Scotland: the places
Our Iconic Scotland collection pairs blended malt with the landscapes that made the country famous.
- Loch Ness — the most famous loch in the world, holding more water than every lake in England and Wales combined. The label reproduces Castle Urquhart, Loch Ness by Hugh “Grecian” Williams, the 13th-century castle that watched over the loch through the Wars of Independence.
- The Isle of Skye — the largest of the Inner Hebrides and a last bastion of Scottish Gaelic, its rugged landscape once called “a nightmare of nature.” The label carries Walter Hugh Paton’s Entrance to the Cuiraing, Skye (1873).
- Edinburgh — the Athens of the North, crowned by perhaps the most beautiful castle in Britain. Our label uses Alexander Nasmyth’s Edinburgh Castle and the Nor’ Loch (1824), painted before the loch was drained to make way for Princes Street Gardens.
- Stirling — for centuries the gateway to the Highlands, a fortress on a narrow isthmus of drained marshland. The label shows William York MacGregor’s The Carse of Stirling.
- St Andrews — ancient seat of Christendom, home of Scotland’s oldest university and the home of golf. The label reproduces Samuel Bough’s Off St. Andrews (1856).
Two more places in the collection carry classic artworks with a personal twist: Glasgow adapts John Atkinson Grimshaw’s Shipping on the Clyde (1881), a nocturne of the Broomielaw when Glasgow was the Second City of the Empire; and Bothwell — our own home village on the Clyde — wears Reverend Charles Cordiner’s 1760s view of Bothwell Castle.
Famous Scots: the faces
Our Famous Scots collection puts a portrait from the national collection on every bottle — the rebels, royals and thinkers who built the Scottish identity.
- Bonnie Prince Charlie — Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender who led the final Jacobite rising of 1745, in William Mosman’s portrait of the prince.
- Mary, Queen of Scots — the tragic queen (1542–1587) beneath her defiant motto, Nemo me impune lacessit — “no one provokes me with impunity.”
- Robert Burns — Scotland’s national poet, in Alexander Nasmyth’s 1787 portrait: the single most recognised image of the Bard.
- Sir Walter Scott — the novelist and poet who romanticised Scotland’s past into its modern identity, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn in 1822–23.
- Adam Smith and David Hume — the father of modern economics and the great humanist philosopher, giants of the Scottish Enlightenment.
The keepsake that doesn’t gather dust
It’s a blended malt Scotch whisky first — something to pour, not just to shelve. But because the label is a genuine work of art with a story attached, it makes a Scottish gift that lands: for a homesick Scot abroad, a whisky lover who has everything, a wedding, a retirement, or any occasion that calls for a wee dram with meaning. A keepsake that starts a conversation, and then fills the glass.
Raising a glass for Burns Night? See our guide to choosing the whisky for your Burns Supper.
Browse the full Iconic Scotland and Famous Scots collections, and pick the place or face that means the most — a wee piece of Scotland to keep, and to share.