The Scotch Malt Whisky Society

Do you enjoy fine whisky, and love having a variety of exotic single malts? Then look no further, the SMWS is for you.
Exceptional whiskies unavailable anywhere else, expert advice, elegant packaging, tasting notes on the label, local whisky tastings organized across the USA, and a family run operation with all the polish & personal touches of a first class private club.
Don’t join because it’s a bargain, but if you regularly drink top-​shelf single malt Scotch, you’ll conclude the SMWS is a great value. Bottles of 25 – 30 year old whiskies regularly sell for well below the comparable expressions from any brand name distillery.
Join and enjoy the whisky. You won’t regret it.

Every so often, something comes along that makes me think, «where have you been all my life?»
SMWS is one of those things.
According to my scotch buddies, there was a time when good single malts were relatively inexpensive. A day when you could walk into a liquor store, buy a bottle of Talisker or Bowmore and expect great things. Then it became really really really cool to drink single malts. Too cool you could say. The demand for single malts increased many fold. People started to believe that «single malt» means better. And to that end, all of the crap whisky that they used to pour into huge vats of J&B and Johnny Walker Red was now being aged too long for its own good and bottled as single malts.
I can’t blame the Scottish people for capitalizing on this. Since the chances of wool fleece seeing this kind of increase in popularity is pretty low, they were wise to jump on the bandwagon and meet the market demand. But this creates a predicament for people who actually appreciate single malts.
Enter the Single Malt Whisky Society. All single cask, hand-​selected bottlings from just about every distillery in Scotland. The name isn’t on the bottle, so these are not very useful for showing off, but what’s inside is the real deal. Eau-​de-​vie, nectar d’or, or whatever lofty term you use to describe a liquid that really has the ability to stimulate your mind and take you somewhere – it’s in there. And the price point is quite a bit less than say a Douglas Laing bottling and about a third what you would pay for a distillery bottling.
I did have a little falling out with SMWS about a year ago. I ordered a 17 year old sherry cask Macallan, thinking you really can’t go wrong with a bottling like that, and it was absolutely rancid with sulfur. They comped me a year of membership for it, but I really wish they would stick to their mission statement a little bit better. If Macallan isn’t going to give you the good casks, fuck ‘em.
All of the other bottlings I’ve received from them have been truly amazing though. I highly recommend joining if you have any interest in finding out why French people don’t drink Cognac any more.

Coming to a city near you soon !
I just went to their bash last night in DC at the JW Marriott** Absolutely fantastic — for the princely sum of $ 103.50 you get:
— $ 30 worth of cigars
— a fantastic gourmet buffet
— lots of swag like hip flasks and pins and last, but by no means least:
— all the top shelf whiskey you can drink. I mean it.
Last night I had the Glenlivet XXV which retails at $ 350 a bottle — very smooth and creamy, I had my own personal favorite, Middelton as well as Laphroaig Quarter Cask, which absolutely blew my head off — the phenol parts per million (ppm as we pretentious twats like to say) is a stratospheric 65 — it’s like drinking in a Donegal peat bog. Bloody brilliant. Forget about the Madeliene Marcel, it cast me back to an afternoon in 1973 when I had climbed the rocky outcrop outside Auntie Katie’s house in Termon and just lay there in the sun.
All the whisky brands are there, and the brand ambassadors tell you all about them, you taste everything they have — big glasses or little glasses — they even had spit buckets which some bloody fools were actually using.
My favourite had to be Glenmorangie — they have four or five whiskies finished in different ways — I have a bottle of La Quinta Ruban in the house — which is port finished — it is magnificent. However last night I compared it to the Nectar D’or, which is finished in — get this — Sauternes barrels. Abso– bloody-​loutely amazing.
I could go on and on — and I think I will. Even lowly Michael Collins at $ 29.95 a bottle impressed me– but that is because it is an Irish whiskey and even cheap Irish whiskey is good, whereas I wouldn’t clean the toilet with cheap Scottish Whiskey. Speaking of which Dewar’s — which I thought was a cooking whiskey — have also come out with a signature blend of whiskies up to 60 or 70 years old — going after the Blue Label market. Delish.
Oh yeah — they served a lot of great food– which was tasty — but the only purpose of the food was to line your stomach for the onslaught of fine whiskies. Angels dancing on my tongue. No, better than that — angels fornicating on my tongue.
The whole thing is from 7.00pm — 9.00 pm, which seems like a short time, but believe me, after sampling about 20 different whiskies I needed a beer and a cigar — we were going to head to Shelley’s Back room a couple of blocks away — but every bloody joker was doing that — so we were smart and cabbed it to Cleveland Park, Aroma and the welcome embrace of Colm the barman, several pints of Yuengling and our cigars.
I love this country.
** these guys are based in Florida, but they organize events all over the country — i went to the one last night in DC check the web site for details.