Scotch Malt Whisky Society Scotch Malt Whisky Society The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS), founded in Edinburgh in 1983, is a membership organisation which bottles and sells single cask, single malt whisky. It purchases individual casks from more than 125 malt whisky distilleries in Scotland and throughout the world, bottles them and retails directly to its members. It also runs three private members' rooms in the UK and in several international locations. The origins of the Society lie in Phillip "Pip" Hills' travels around the Scottish Highlands in the late 1970s, during which he sampled several whiskies drawn straight from the cask. Hills was
Scotch Malt Whisky Society of a Sumo wrestler surfing on the label. As of September 2010, around 3,597 single casks had been bottled by the Society since 1983. Society whisky is bottled at its original cask strength, typically upwards of 55 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV). It is more common in the Scotch whisky industry to reduce the spirit at bottling to around 40 per cent and put it through a chill filtering process, which prevents it from clouding at low temperatures. Scotch Malt Whisky Society The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS), founded in Edinburgh in 1983, is a membership organisation which bottles