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
Amrut (whisky) then pumped into a 5,000-litre Indian-made semi-conical wash still, where it undergoes slow distillation for 14 hours. Surinder Kumar, the master blender at Amrut Distilleries, says that this allows for "more reflux, more contact time with the copper". The spirit is then distilled again in Scottish-style, but Indian-made, 5,000-litre copper spirit still with a boil ball. This produces spirit between 68% and 70% abv. If the spirit is diluted to 62.8%, each distillation run makes enough to fill 20 barrels. The whisky is aged in a mix of new oak and used Bourbon barrels imported from the United States. The