Glenturret 1977-1984 - SMWS 16.1

Glenturret claims to have started life in 1775 as an illicit Highland distillery called Hosh, which was renamed Glenturret a century later before being dismantled in the 1920s. The current Glenturret distillery was reborn on the Hosh site in the 1950s and was taken over by Highland Distillers (later Edrington) in 1990. Edrington made Glenturret the home of their Famous Grouse blend in 2002 before selling the distillery in 2019 to the crystal manufacturers Lalique.

Glenturret is a small distillery with a capacity well under half a million litres a year, the vast majority of which used to be destined for Famous Grouse. The distillery makes a small quantity of sought-after peated whisky named Ruadh Maor. Glenturret’s core range has been completely refreshed under the new owners, while at auction older long-aged official bottlings are often good value and well worth seeking out.

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.