Cragganmore 1988-2000 - 12 Year Old - SMWS 37.16

Cragganmore was founded in 1869 by John Smith, and became part-owned by Diageo forerunner DCL in 1927 when the latter bought White Horse Distillers, which had taken a 50% share of Cragganmore in 1923. DCL obtained full control of Cragganmore in 1965, the year after the distillery was expanded to four stills. In 1987 Cragganmore 12-year-old became the Speyside representative of DCL successor United Distillers’ Classic Malts series of single malt whiskies.

Cragganmore’s official bottling history is uneventful. Prior to its elevation to the Classic Malts, a 12-year-old Cragganmore was bottled by DCL subsidiary D&J McCallum Ltd, which held the distillery’s licence; subsequent official bottlings included a superb 17-year-old Manager’s Dram sherry cask released in 1992 and regular outings in Diageo’s Special Releases. Independent Cragganmore is relatively rare, although the SMWS, Duncan Taylor and Gordon & MacPhail have all bottled fine examples from earlier vintages.

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.