Matt Bailey

Hosting @ Home

BY MATT BAILEY

We’re putting Covid behind us and looking to December, which is a month of festive gatherings, family lunches, and opportunities to open something special from your SMWS stash and share with friends and family (if you dare…)

With that in mind, we’ve written up our top tips on how to host your own home tasting, how to bring the unconventional, unexpected, and often otherworldly flavours in the glass to newcomers and fellow members.

TIP 01 CREATE THE SETTING

LESS IS MORE

You don’t need chesterfields or stuffy boardrooms to host your own whisky tasting, but you also might want to avoid the kitchen where aromas might throw or overwhelm your senses. Pick a spot at home that is welcoming and comfortable to enjoy a dram or three.

TIP 02 PREP YOUR SPACE

Print off a few copies of the home tasting kit (free on our site), lay out some appropriate glassware like our SMWS tasting glasses, a water jug, a pipette (or teaspoon for water), and a few bottles of drinking water too.

TIP 03

Less is sometimes more! For my first home tasting I asked everybody who came to bring a bottle of whisky of any choice, but that was too much. Now if I’m hosting at home I’ll have between 8-10 whiskies and choose them based on a specific theme, for example different bottlings from the same distillery (a vertical tasting as it’s sometimes known), or SMWS vs original bottlings, or blended malts vs single malts, or a “then and now” theme can be fun.

TIP 04 GO ONE BY ONE

It’s amazing how much joy people can have in coming together and having a dram, with a little guidance of course. The expectation for the next tasting and the sheer happiness in their eyes when I send them home amazes me every time! My advice would be not to pour the whiskies all at once. It helps to keep the crowd focused when you pour them one by one. Also, it’s okay not to know everything – but try to find out the answers to any questions before the next tasting. It gives you a nice ‘follow up’ to start with the next time you get together.

TIP 05 DON’T RUSH IT

Take your time! People new to sampling Scotch whisky may not have used a Society or Glencairn tasting glass before and need to be introduced to nosing the whisky as part of the experience. Those who are used to having whisky on the rocks or with water also need to be encouraged to try at least a sip neat before adding a drop of water. Encourage a revisit to the nose and delay finishing the whisky for 15-20 minutes or more. Jump back into Andrew’s article in this Outturn about newcomers to whisky and how some training might be required here!

TIP 06 PREPARE SOME TASTING NOTES

You don’t need a thesis of tasting notes for every whisky, but even a condensed tasting note like on the front of Society bottles will especially help those unfamiliar with the breadth of flavours in great whisky can go a long way. Tasting notes should be used as a guide to help find what’s happening in your glass, not the definitive on what is or isn’t there. If your guests pick up fresh lavender, but not the note of “crisp cinnamon on a Wednesday afternoon”, don’t be disheartened.

TIP 07 WATER, WATER, WATER

Cask strength single cask whisky can be daunting, especially to those unfamiliar with spirits above 40% ABV. Give your guests an opportunity to add water to their whisky, sometimes even liberally, even to the point where you think “Gah, that’s drowned!” and then some… everyone will bring something different to the table in experience and will find their ‘sweet spot’ for enjoyment.

TIP 08 FOCUS ON FLAVOUR

It’s more than just a phrase we say at the Society: it’s a way of looking at and enjoying whisky in a whole new way. Take the brand out of it, take the preconceived expectation out, and hone in on flavour. The way I like to do this is to discuss each whisky a bit, ask what flavours people are getting, and use food or nostalgia to draw this out initially. If someone says a whisky is “sweet” then see if you can go one layer deeper: what kind of sweetness? Brown sugar? Sweet nuts? Meringue? Honey? There’s so many levels to just ‘sweet’ that can drill down. Then go another one deeper: what type of honey? What kind of nut? This makes for a fun exploration where there are no wrong answers, just subjective enjoyment.

TIP 09 MIX IT UP

While I’ll always recommend tasting some of these special whiskies with a drop of water or just neat, there’s no harm in mixing it up even further. You or one of your guests might find a malt or grain that would just do wonderful things in a whisky sour, or an old fashioned, or just a highball! (PS try a Society Lightly Peated profile cask in a highball this summer, and thank me later…) However you enjoy it, however your guests approach it, can make for an incredibly fun evening of gathering over the Christmas season, discovering great flavours, and taking your tastebuds on a journey.

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