Decoding the SMWS

At 27,000 members and 28 years old, with branches across the globe, SMWS—the Scotch Malt Whisky Society—is one of the largest and oldest whisky clubs in the world. Each month SMWS outturns numerous single cask bottlings from across the gamut of scotch malt whisky and even a few other whiskies, each with its own whimsical name, a unique Society Cask Number…and absolutely no verbiage about which distillery produced the whisky.

SMWS bottlings stretch across the gamut of scotch malt whisky, as well as some other whiskies (grain, bourbon, rye) and even other spirits (armagnac, cognac, rum, gin). And the labels are loaded with information, just not the distillery. Two official reasons exist for this anomaly, since many if not most independent bottlers do list the distillery. Firstly, SMWS does not want drinkers to prejudge a bottle based on official bottlings, prior experiences, and established distillery profiles. Secondly, some distilleries simply won’t let them; to avoid marketplace confusion, they only agree to sell casks if the independent bottler agrees not to put the distillery name on the bottle.

But of course whisky aficionados want to know who produced what they are drinking. So how does one learn a SMWS bottls’s provenance?

For that, one must turn to the Society Cask Number, which is in the format XXX.XXX. The digits after the “.” are the easy ones, indicating how many casks from that particular distillery SMWS has bottled. For example, if the Cask Number is 16.50, that means that bottle comes from the 50th cask SMWS has turned from distillery…#16.

As to the distillery itself, one must turn to the SMWS code list, available across the web—although not on the Society’s own site—and included here below. Even the source of these codes is somewhat shrouded in mystery, although their ready availability pretty much makes them the In-N-Out secret menu of the whisky world. The commonly stated reasoning is that the tasting notes and region printed on the bottle help pinpoint the source distillery…although I know many people who believe that the code list has been unofficially leaked by SMWS and that the consistency of such lists over a wide range of sources confirms such beliefs.

Regardless of the source, the accepted SMWS are as follows: