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
Blended malt whisky using a corn mash). In practice, unless a different grain is specifically mentioned, a "malt" whisky is assumed to be made from barley. In the case of Scotch whisky, blended malts do not contain any whisky made from grains other than barley or spirits distilled using continuous distillation, unlike products labelled as "blended whisky". For the Scotch whisky industry, the terms "vatted malt" or "pure malt" have been reclassified as "blended malts" per the Scotch Whisky Regulations of 2009, and it has become unlawful to label Scotch Whisky using the prior terminology. When an age statement appears on the label