The three monkeys on the bottle stand for the blend's three Speyside single malts, and they have now switched shoulders in the brand's new look
Anyone ordering a Monkey Shoulder at a bar may not know that the name comes from a workplace injury. According to the brand's official website, monkey shoulder was the name for the ailment that struck malt men, the workers who turned barley by hand during malting. That manual stage of whisky-making is long gone, but the name was kept as a tribute to the people who did the work.
The whisky was launched in 2005 in Speyside, Scotland, by William Grant & Sons, which also owns Glenfiddich. It is a blended malt: instead of coming from a single distillery, like a single malt, it blends three Speyside single malts. According to the brand, the three monkeys drawn on the bottle's shoulder represent those three malts. The Spirits Business reports that they mature in first-fill ex-bourbon casks and that the whisky is bottled at 40% ABV. The brand itself describes notes of orange, vanilla and ginger.
The brand returned to the news on October 1, when William Grant & Sons announced a global redesign of the bottle, according to The Spirits Business. The three-monkey emblem moved from the right shoulder to the left, got bigger and gained an antique-copper finish, a reference to distillation. The monkeys left the front label, where they had been since 2024, and the brand story and tasting notes got more space. The colors, in shades of orange, were kept. The official website already shows the 2026 bottle and says it gives greater prominence to the three monkeys.
It is not the first change. According to the magazine, the bottle got a larger front label in 2017 and a neck wrap in 2021. The current refresh follows a similar makeover for Glenfiddich in early 2026, at a difficult time for the brands' owner: William Grant & Sons reported a 13% drop in profit for 2025, amid weak consumer demand.
Sources: Monkey Shoulder (official website, October 4, 2026), The Spirits Business (October 1, 2026).
