Glenmorangie 2004-2013 - 9 Year Old - SMWS 125.68 - A Tale Of Two Ladies

Glenmorangie is the 10th largest malt whisky distillery in Scotland with a capacity of around 6.5m litres per year, but punches above its weight in sales volumes, where it is ranked 5th in the world for single malt Scotch whisky. Glenmorangie was expanded to its current 12 stills in 2009, and capacity has recently been augmented with the addition of two extra stills in 2021 for a separate, experimental distillery onsite exploring possible future innovations in distillation technique.

Glenmorangie is almost never independently bottled, although teaspooned casks occasionally appear as Westport. The official core range comprises the classic Glenmorangie age statement and wood finish editions alongside the popular Signet expression, which uses a proportion of chocolate malt, and a variety of small batch and limited edition bottlings each year. In 2024 a new 12-year-old edition replaced the iconic Glenmorangie Original 10-year-old.

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.