Exports of single malt continued to rise in 2008.

As expected, exports of all  Scotch whisky fell as HM Revenue and Customs figures show, with volumes down by 5% on the year before. Observers feel that this was much less severe than expected given the dire gloom and doom  at the end of 2008, and is a "reasonably good performance" given the circumstances. The EU was down 5.9% and the rest of the world was down 4.4%.

However, encouragingly, bottled single malt exports managed a modest increase in volume over 2007 up 0.5%.

Intriguingly, plain grain whisky shipments collapsed by 59% - but bulk malt whisky volumes increased by a whopping 51% or 3.8 million litres of pure alcohol's worth.

I bet that was to India...