The SMWS is an organisation that bottles single cask whiskies at their natural cask strength exclusively for their members. It all started in the late 70ies when a group of friends shared the cost to buy a cask from the Glenfarclas distillery. Over the time the group grew bigger and they purchased more casks. In 1983 they decided to open membership to a wider public and the society was born. Over the years the society has expanded and there are now branches all over the world. One of them is the Swiss branch who was founded by Scottish expats who were members of the SMWS. What's really special about the Society is that they don't put the name of the distillery on the bottle but a code. Each distillery has a certain number and the code is composed of this number and a second number which expresses the cask. So the 25th cask from Clynelish, which is distillery no. 26 would be called 26.50. Every bottling has also a quite unique nickname and some very wild tasting notes, you will see what I'm talking about later in this article.
The first time I learned about the society was a while back. It was my mothers birthday and I enjoyed a dram when my neighbour aproached me and told me that he is member of the SMWS. (read the full story here) Ever since he told me that I should come to a tasting in Zurich with him but most of the time he couldn't make it. A month ago, again on my moms birthday he asked me if I want to go with his friends instead of him. I didn't hesitate because I was really interested as I had only heard great things about the society so I was really eager to finally check out what all the hype was about.
After I was done with working at the whisky shop I met up with Peters friends. I already knew two of them because I visited a whisky collector with them last year (you can read the whole story in the article I linked above). After grabbing a little snack and a beer we then headed to the location of the tasting which is only a 5 minutes walk of our shop.
After entering we were seated by the host, Olaf Meier who is the SMWS brand ambassador and we took our seats. A really funny conicidence was that the persons opposite the table were teachers at my old highschool. They weren't teachers of one of my classes but I recognized them and we started talking about my old school and whisky. It was really funny and we all enjoyed this evening
Then the tasting started and we were served the first of a 5 whiskies. The bottle was 39.108 and had the nickname "Omelette Surprise" (The German names are different to the English ones. In UK that one is called "Baked Alaska"). This expression from the Linkwood distillery was distilled in 2004 and after maturing for 10 years in a refill barrel it was bottled at 61.3% ABV in 2015. This whisky was quite fruity and very palatable. A nice start indeed.
