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End Date : May 13 2026 08:00 PM
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Laphroaig 1990 - 1999. 8 Year Old. Bottled by The Scotch Malt Whisky Society.Society cask number 29.11. A Passing Trawler. Love It Or Hate It. One of 259 bottles. 70cl. 59.4%. 103.9 Proof. No box.
From the archives. "A Passing Trawler. Love It Or Hate It": There can be no compromise with this malt (according to its current advertising). Certainly it is the most tarry of all malt whiskies, and, of course, comes from Kildalton Parish in Islay.
We found this example to be gentler and more subtle than the standard bottling - 'more feminine', someone said - but the nose is unmistakably Islay: Vick inhaler and footbaths, but with herbs and Hubba-Bubba bubblegum. And the maritime, salty dog aromas we know and love (or hate, as the case may be) in this example are more like a passing trawler, rather than being in the engine room or the hold.
The flavour is sweet and salty, with heaps of charcoal: heavy-duty tarpaulins, tar on the beach, oilskins, a hint of rubber. As Noel Coward said to Beryl Reid, "It'll put hairs on your chest"; "Not on my chest, surely, Sir Noel"; "Oh, you give up hope so easily"!
The original price for this bottle in 1999 was £39.
An iconic southern Islay distillery, Laphroaig is the benchmark for heavily-peated smoky single malt whisky. The distillery has been Islay’s most successful single malt for many decades now, so much so that in 1908, following a commercial dispute, White Horse’s Peter Mackie famously tried to create a copy of Laphroaig at Lagavulin, leading to the birth of Malt Mill.
Today, the most revered and sought-after Laphroaigs at auction fall broadly into two camps: the old official bottlings of Laphroaig 10-year-old from the late 1960s-1980s; and the extraordinary independent bottlings of 1960s and early 1970s vintages by Gordon & MacPhail, Signatory, Cadenhead’s and the Italian bottlers Samaroli and Intertrade. The common denominator in these legendary bottlings is a remarkably fruity character alongside the phenolic bombast - sadly this fruitiness is no longer found in Laphroaig’s modern distillate.
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 members rooms in Edinbrugh, Glasgow and London and a string of international partnerships serving its 40,000 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.
| BID | DATE | TIME | |
|---|---|---|---|
| £180.00 | 13th May 2026 | 11:45 AM | |
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