Today, Johnnie Walker offers several different "labels" of scotch whisky, designated by color. Johnnie Walker Black Label is the second tier scotch from the famous and well-known label and said to be the personal favorite of Winston Churchill. One of its principal components is from the Cardhu Distillery, which is not widely available outside of Spain.

Johnnie Walker--the man whose name would grace the bottles of more scotch whisky than any other brand in the 21st century--was born in 1805 and began as a grocery store manager at age 14 in 1819. Part of the grocery business was a personal blend of whisky. Yet it was his son Alexander who took the Johnnie Walker blend of whisky to the worldwide markets in its square bottle (the first of its kind and designed to save space in shipping) in 1860. The Eyewitness Companion to Whiskey quotes brand owner Diageo claiming over 7 million casks of whisky in the maturation process at any given time. This unrivaled amount of whisky allows them great specificity and consistency in their blends and that all the scotch together is worth more than all the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England.The company was acquired by Guiness in 1985, which eventually became Diageo in a merger in 1997.