WHISKY MAVERICK

Pip Hills, founder of The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, was a larger-than-life bon viveur who had a profound effect on the whisky industry, says Blair Bowman

It took a bon viveur to found The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, an institution that continues to enjoy an impeccable reputation

It doesn’t, at first sight, look like a blockbuster, but the story of how the Scotch Malt Whisky Society came into being is fascinating. The life and times of Philip ‘Pip’ Hills, the founder of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, is equally compelling. In his wonderfully readable book The Founder’s Tale: A Good Idea and a Glass of Malt, the garrulous Hills’ gift as a storyteller is immediately apparent.

The story of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society starts with Hills visiting friends in rural Aberdeenshire. While there he would also visit the neighbouring farmer who had a small cask of whisky in his kitchen with a small spigot in it. Noting how flavourful and potent this whisky was – and learning how the farmer acquired it – on returning to Edinburgh he told friends about his experience of tasting whisky directly from the cask. Would they, he asked, be interested in being in a syndicate if he could get a hold of a cask like this?

Hills learned that this quarter cask came from Glenfarclas, that only a limited number were sold each year, and that you had to be on a list. When he enquired with George Grant at Glenfarclas about purchasing a cask he found out that one of the customers who normally acquired a quarter cask had died and had no one to inherit his supply.

So £2,500 later, and after a hilarious journey in his 1937 Lagonda, Hills was back in Edinburgh and invited his friends round to his home on Scotland Street to taste this special whisky direct from the cask. No one had tasted anything like it at the time. After much tasting, they divided up everyone’s share of the cask into gallon jars. Within a few week Hills was receiving phone calls from complete strangers who had heard about his syndicate and its amazing whisky, and wanted in.

Word of mouth in the arts and media circles of Edinburgh spread rapidly, so eventually the syndicate decided to form a society. When several whisky distilleries were mothballed in 1983 the Scotch Malt Whisky Society was established. Hills notes that the industry, at that time, had no idea how good the quality of their whisky was as they were focused on blends. With some very clever PR around the launch they quickly amassed over 10,000 members.

Fast forward to today and the SMWS is still going strong and continues to focus on single cask, cask strength whisky, although it has recently expanded its repertoire to include rums, gins and blended malts.

The original numbering system on the bottles is still used. You may be expecting it to be like the whisky that distillery usually produces, but because it is from a single cask it can be quite different. For this reason the Society uses a distillery number code system. On the label of each bottle you will see a number followed by a decimal point. The first number refers to the distillery and the number after the decimal point refers to the number of casks the Society has purchased from that distillery. For example, the first SMWS bottling was 1.1. The first 1 refers to Glenfarclas and the second 1 is because it was the first cask from Glenfarclas. This clever system also gets around any potential Intellectual Property issues that might arise by bottling another company’s whiskies.

The Society is also known for having creative descriptions for each release to give you a sense of what to expect from that bottle. Current bottlings include 113.29 ‘Margherita Jagerbomb’ and 36.172 ‘Orange Oil and Wine Corks’. These bottlings are also grouped by 12 distinct flavour profiles to help you find a whisky to suit your tastes. Having been a member of the Society’s tasting panel I can assure you that only the best casks were approved for bottling.

Membership starts from just £65 which allows you to purchase the monthly out-turn of around 20 single cask bottlings. It also gives you access to the ‘spiritual home’ of the Society at The Vaults in Leith as well as 28 Queen Street in Edinburgh’s New Town, 19 Greville Street in London’s Farringdon district and most recently at 38 Bath Street in Glasgow’s city centre.

The Society is active in nine European countries, both major North American nations, and nine Oceanic or Asian nations. It also has various ‘partner bars’ dotted around the world who offer Society bottlings and discounts for Society members.

If you or someone in your life enjoys whisky then I would encourage you to join up to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. It gives you the chance to access whisky in its purest form and what can be more fun than a deep dive into the amazing flavour explorations of natural colour, non-chill filtered, single cask, cask strength whisky?

“Word spread and within a few weeks Hills was receiving phone calls from complete strangers

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