Dufftown 1978-1997 - 18 Year Old - SMWS 91.8 - Sippin Whisky

Dufftown is one of the lesser-known Speysiders, despite being one of the larger distilleries in Diageo’s portfolio. Dufftown was for many years part of the Bell’s whisky company, which also owned the Blair Athol, Inchgower, Pittyvaich and Bladnoch distilleries when it was acquired by Guinness in 1985. This hostile takeover brought all of those distilleries into the United Distillers fold and later into Diageo. 

Dufftown’s malt was bottled officially at least as early as the 1950s and an official 40-year-old appeared in the 1970s. A 15-year-old Flora & Fauna bottling appeared in 1988, followed by a Rare Malts Edition and an underrated sherried Centenary Bottling in the 1990s. Dufftown became the European face of The Singleton whisky range in 2007, and Singleton of Dufftown featured in Diageo’s Special Releases in 2013 and 2020. Independent bottlings of Dufftown whisky are easy to find.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) began in late 1970s Edinburgh when founder Pip Hills persuaded a group of friends to chip in for a cask of Glenfarclas, and was officially formalised in 1983. Today the SMWS has two venues in Edinburgh, a London bar and a string of international partnerships serving its 35,000 members. 

The Society’s whiskies are known for their unique SMWS coding system. Each cask bottled is assigned two numbers, representing the distillery and the bottling number, so 1.45 is the forty-fifth cask bottled from the first distillery and 33.27 is the 27th cask from the 33rd distillery.

Glenmorangie bought the Society in 2004, but sold it in 2015 to a private consortium who floated the SMWS on the stock market in 2021 via their holding company Artisanal Spirits Co.