Festival flavours coming your way

May feels like a turning point in the year for me, for many reasons – even in Scotland, the weather is starting to feel a bit more summer-like, the nights are starting to stretch longer and longer and suddenly there’s a frenzy of whisky activity.

From the Spirit of Speyside festival, down to Campbeltown for the Malts Festival and ultimately over to Islay for Fèis Ìle, it’s an outstanding time to be a whisky fan in Scotland. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society has plenty in store, both with our events and our offering of special festival bottlings, and you can read all about that in this issue of Unfiltered. You can also travel vicariously with SMWS member Jay Baris’s feature about his experience on Islay with his son, a trip not to be forgotten – for many reasons.

This month, we’re also releasing our Scotch & Sherry: A Flavour Odyssey documentary that I produced for the Society, a labour of love that I’m delighted is now seeing the light of day – along with a special printed magazine that will also be coming your way very soon. I’m very proud of both and hope they can enlighten you on the worlds of Scotch and sherry and the beautiful synergy between the two worlds – and how much care and attention the Society goes to in sourcing the very best in sherry casks.

Elsewhere we take a trip to the Nc’nean distillery to hear from founder Annabel Thomas, continue our ‘flavour focus’ journey with Gavin D Smith’s look at the distillation process, and we celebrate Olaf Meier’s incredible 20 years as an SMWS ambassador.

If you’re travelling to the festivals, I hope you have a fantastic time. If not – it’s never to early to start thinking about next year…

Cheers,