SMWS Island - Quarter Bottle

Undisclosed bottlings are whiskies bottled independently without using the distillery’s name on the label. This can occur when an independent bottler releases a cask of whisky from a distillery that has expressly stipulated as a condition of sale that its name be withheld when those casks are bottled. Macallan, Glenlivet, Glenmorangie, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Glenfarclas and Highland Park are among the most famous, if not necessarily the most frequently-encountered, of the distillers who regularly go unnamed.

Other common reasons for a distillery’s single malt whisky not being named on the label include independent companies simply choosing the flexibility of not naming the source distilleries for their proprietary brands in case they wish to use multiple source distilleries or to change their source distillery at a later date. Bottlings from Undisclosed distilleries are always cheaper than their official distillery counterparts and are generally excellent value in the secondary market.

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.