Code breakers
What does 1.9.8.3 mean to The Scotch Malt Whisky Society? It means four decades of outstanding single cask whisky, a curious coding system and the release of a special collection of four bottles to celebrate our 40th anniversary
PHOTOS: MIKE WILKINSON
PICTURED: SMWS founder Pip Hills with the Society’s first ever bottling
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society has always done doing things differently – that’s why we’re marking our 40th anniversary by celebrating our Maverick-in-Chief, Pip Hills, who founded a whisky club in 1983 when the wider industry said there was no demand for or interest in single cask, single malt whisky. Four decades on, Pip’s passion for whisky in its purest form is now shared with almost 40,000 members across the world.
The Society’s distinctive bottle code numbering system goes back to our origins, and was created to protect the brands of the distilleries which supplied us in those early days. As Pip previously told Unfiltered:
“As the names of all whiskies are registered trademarks, I was advised that, if we put the name of the whisky or distillery on our bottles, we would be open to legal action for infringement of trademark. Not only that, it would generally put people’s backs up in the industry and they wouldn’t sell their whisky to us.”
And so the Society’s coding system was born.
“I decided to make a virtue out of a necessity and created the numbering system,” says Pip. “We chose not to use the name of the distillery and used an identifying numeral which, through clues in the Tasting Notes and information in our newsletter, could be connected to the whisky.”
The Society’s first release was given the number 1.1, although the distillery it came from was openly identified at the time. Cask Nos. 2.1 and 3.1 only referred to a Speyside and an Islay from unidentified distilleries.
By not naming names in the early days, the Society was also able to show sceptical distilleries that their valuable brands would not be damaged by single casks that might not represent their usual flavour profile. Now, as Society ambassador Olaf Meier says, the cask numbering system has come to embody the way Society members approach their whisky exploration.
“When it comes to understanding single casks, distillery names are just a distraction,” he says. “Even factors like age and alcoholic strength won’t tell you much, but at least they’re interesting clues. Distillery names, though? Society members want to discover whiskies for themselves, without prejudices or preconceived expectations.”
The Society is now well into the 150s and the number grows all the time as we bottle from new distilleries, such as with our New Wave series this year from distilleries 146, 149 and 156. Many members will be able to identify our distilleries by their Society code, or have their favourite numbers to look out for. But for our special release for our 40th anniversary, we’ve returned to some of the original distilleries that we first bottled from back in our earliest days.
Distilleries 1, 9, 8 and 3, of course, spell out the year that the Society was founded. In this collection we hark back to the Society’s first bottling, with Cask No. 1.282: Magic shadow show from the Speyside distillery where it all began for us in 1983. Cask No. 9.274: Toffee apple orchard is a 19-year-old classic Sweet, Fruity & Mellow flavour profile bottling. Cask No. 8.43: Shaded by flowers is from one of our less commonly seen distilleries, renowned for its use of sherry cask maturation and Cask No. 3.348: Mellifluous quince is a Society favourite from an Islay distillery treasured for its perfumed smoke.
“We’re very excited about this set that’s coming out and it’s visually stunning as well, with an excellent label design,”
says SMWS head of whisky creation, Euan Campbell. “The four distillery numbers pay tribute to the founding year of ours in 1983. And there are some pretty quirky, interesting things about these bottlings as well.
“One that really jumps out at me is Cask No. 8.43: Shaded by flowers. This is seven years old and it’s from a full-term maturation in a first fill Pedro Ximénez sherry cask. It’s also the first bottling we’ve seen from this distillery since 2006 – so it’s a welcome return for distillery number 8. This is also from our cask filling programme, and I remember the day back in November 2015 when we actually commissioned this cask to be filled. So that was a really nice thing to see that coming through from our fillings programme.”