Euan Campbell

Hunting Down the Society’s Rare Releases

BY EUAN CAMPBELL, SMWS SPIRITS MANAGER

The Society is ready to let loose six exclusive festival bottlings. Spirits Manager Euan Campbell explains how we created them, and why you should try and grab a dram….

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society was formed to celebrate the joy in sharing exceptional whisky – and there’s nothing quite like the festival month of May to demonstrate that our founding principle is not only alive and kicking – it’s bigger and more all-encompassing than ever.

A lucky few from our global membership will be heading to the different whisky regions in May to take part in tastings, dinners and parties, celebrating the contribution each of these areas has made to the wider world of whisky. The Society will be there, of course, but we wanted to make sure that as many of our members as possible – whether they are physically present at the festivals or not – could get to share the experience in their glasses, wherever you might be.

“We wanted to make sure that as many of our members as possible could get to share the experience in their glasses, wherever you might be.”

AN INCLUSIVE APPROACH

With that in mind, we’re taking a different approach this year with our exclusive range of ‘Rare Releases’ festival bottlings, creating a series of six small batch single malts that we’ll be able to share in greater quantities across our global membership than we could ever hope to do with bottlings from a single cask. And we’re not only celebrating the physical festivals taking place again throughout May this year in Speyside, Campbeltown and Islay. Even if the Highlands and Lowlands aren’t holding their own events, we didn’t want to neglect these regions, and have bottled single malts from both areas so that we can offer festival bottlings from across the five whisky regions.

EXPANDING HORIZONS

All six whiskies are single malts from different, individual distilleries, bottled at their natural strength and across a range of flavour profiles – even the two Peated bottlings from Islay show distinct characteristics. In the development of each, we decided what flavour profile we were looking to showcase and then looked at how we were going to achieve it by working with loads of samples, nosing and tasting our way through them, grouping them and then deciding what we thought worked best. We’ve been able to work with a wide variety of cask types to nudge our recipes in the right direction as well, and these small batch single malts are great examples of how that variety of wood types also helps to give us an infinite number of flavours to play with. That could be in some examples by getting the full impact of one cask type, or in others by using a mix of bourbon and sherry wood to create something completely different. Characterful spirit and characterful casks make for an incredible combination and helps us to continue to expand our horizons.

A FESTIVAL WITHIN A FESTIVAL

You can think of it as a ‘festival within a festival’, where we’re hunting down flavours and characteristics from across the regions. You can judge for yourself how typical or not they may be of the regions they come from – or whether that’s of any importance. What matters to us is that as many of you as possible, from Scotland to Australia, Japan to the United States and beyond, get the chance to share these sensational drams – and if you can’t make it over here this year, at least you’re getting a taste to transport you. Cheers,

Euan Campbell

SMWS Spirits Manager

WEEK 1 HIGHLAND FESTIVAL & MALT OF THE MONTH FRI 6 MAY FESTIVAL BOTTLINGS WEEK 2 SPEYSIDE FESTIVAL & LOWLAND FESTIVAL FRI 13 MAY

WEEK 3

Please note that due to shipping delays, the Festival bottlings have been delayed and will not be available for dispatch until July. CAMPBELTOWN FESTIVAL FRI 20 MAY