Four deliveries, four label claims
A bar receives four bottles and the manager must decide what can go on a 40-line menu under the name printed.
A. 'London Dry Gin'. The producer's spec sheet states 12 g/L sugar and caramel colour are added after distillation. B. 'Single Malt Scotch Whisky'. Distilled 2022, bottled 2024. C. 'Straight Bourbon Whiskey'. Aged 20 months in new charred oak. D. 'Cognac'. Distilled in Spain from Ugni Blanc, then shipped to a French merchant.
Shelf space fits 30 bottles and the manager cannot return everything - two of the four can be re-labelled into a generic category and kept.
1. For each bottle, state whether the printed name can be used, and why.
Read the worked answer
- A - no. 'London Dry' is a strict production term: no more than a trace of sweetening and no added colour. Sugar at 12 g/L and caramel colouring both break it. The liquid is gin, but not London Dry gin.
- B - no. Scotch whisky must be matured in oak for a minimum of three years. Two years fails, so it cannot be called Scotch whisky at all - and in most markets it fails the general three-year rule for whisky too. This one cannot be rescued by renaming.
- C - no, not as printed. Bourbon has no minimum age, so the whiskey is legal bourbon - but 'straight' requires at least two years. At 20 months the word 'straight' must go. Relabel as Bourbon Whiskey and keep the age statement if it is accurate.
- D - no. Cognac is a geographic designation; the spirit must be produced in the delimited region of France, not merely shipped by a French house. It is a brandy, and can be labelled as such if it meets generic brandy rules.
2. Apply the shelf-space constraint: which bottles go back, and which are re-labelled and kept? Justify the choice.
Read the worked answer
Return B and D. Re-label A and C and keep them.
Reasoning:
- B is unsellable as whisky of any kind at two years old, so it is dead stock on this menu - no rename makes it compliant. Return.
- D is a brandy, but the bar already stocks brandy and the bottle's value rests on the Cognac name. Stripped of it, it is an unknown-price generic, so returning is the better commercial call.
- A is still a perfectly good gin. Drop 'London Dry' from the menu and list it simply as gin, with the sweetening disclosed if a guest asks. Keep - gin is a high-rotation category.
- C keeps its value: 'Bourbon Whiskey' is the honest, saleable name, and bourbon sells. Keep.
Note the discipline running through all four: the printed name on a bottle is a claim about production method or origin, and a menu entry repeats that claim to the customer. Where the claim fails, the fix is either a narrower true name or removal - never a quiet omission.
3. A guest asks for 'a brandy that isn't sweet'. How does what you now know about these bottles shape your answer?
Read the worked answer
Separate two different meanings of sweet before answering.
- Added sweetening: bottle A shows a producer can add sugar to a spirit. Some brandies and gins are sweetened; a guest avoiding sweetness may be reacting to that. Check the spec sheets rather than guessing.
- Perceived sweetness: most brandies are dry in the structural sense but smell of vanilla, caramel and dried fruit from oak. A guest can call that 'sweet' while the liquid contains no sugar.
Practical answer: pour the D brandy if it is still in stock - a dry grape brandy with oak-derived aroma - and tell the guest it is dry, with vanilla and dried-fruit notes coming from the cask, not from sugar. If the guest specifically wants no oak sweetness at all, steer to a younger, less oak-driven spirit. The judgement is to diagnose which 'sweet' the guest means before recommending.