The SWA are determined to force The Blanded Malt category upon us all.

The SWA is 60% owned by Diageo & Pernod. It represents 95% of distlling capacity but only a a third of Scottish-based whisky companies. What right does it have to play fast and loose with laws that will impact so heavily on Scotland's heritage and image overseas?

What's wrong with the existing title "Vatted Malt" that is clearly distinguishable in any tongue by both sight and sound from the existing terms "blended whisky" and "single malt".

This is what's wrong: the SWA tell me their members thought vats had an industrial connotation associated with chemicals and additives; consequently Vatted Malt has an inferior association.

Now what exactly does that tell you about the way these guys work!?

They say in a nanny-like way that it is all for clarity. Don't forget, there is also "single grain". "Single malt" refers to a whisky produced on pot stills at a single distillery from malted barley; Here, single refers to the distillery.

Single Grain is a whisky to be produced on patent stills from malted barley. Does single refer to the grain type or the distillery? If it is the distillery, what is the relevance of the word 'grain' when it is also malted barley? Here grain refers in reality to a method of industrial production. Some clarity then.

The Scotch Blog - a rare oasis of whisky sanity - has collated various arguments and opinions about this issue that has concentrated around the term Blanded Malt.

Look a little deeper and these new regulations - at best naively drafted, at worst a cynical manipulation - taken together represent the single greatest shake up of the whisky world in at least a century; an exploitation entirely for the commercial benefit of the handful of mega corporations that own the industry's regulatory body.