SMWS DISCOVERY
Singapore scene
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s branch in Singapore relaunched at the end of last year and is already proving a hit with its SMWS-inspired approach to building an engaged and lively local whisky community. Singapore’s seven partner bars have become vibrant hubs that harness the city-nation’s distinct national identity through innovative whisky experiences. Jeremy Lim from SMWS Singapore explains how the team are raising the bar when it comes to savouring a dram together
ABOVE: A Peranakan pairing dinner with the SMWS in Singapore, where typical cuisine from this ethnic group was paired with SMWS whisky
The Republic of Singapore is small. The island nation that gained independence from the British in 1965 boasts a land mass of just 735km2, housing a population of 5.5 million. And you’d be surprised: Singapore still asks you to judge it on its size – but that only makes the significance of its feats all the greater. There’s certainly something larger than life about the story of Pip Hills, and of The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, that Singapore relates to, a club that started out small but always punched above its weight. Likewise, the local Society here has quickly found its feet and forged an identity it can very much call its own.
WHEN SCOTCH MEETS SINGAPORE
Singapore’s SMWS members – around 100 of them at the moment – are proud to call themselves part of the Society. The intimate nature of the club here means that every new member who joins brings something new. And it’s the promise of fresh interactions that adds to the appeal of a local Society – come for the whisky, stay for the people.
It’s our events that bring these members together. Each tasting can spontaneously impart a healthy dose of local culture together with the whisky, which can always bring the drams to life in new ways and provide stories for the future.
Six months after its reboot by distributors La Maison du Whisky (LMDW) Asia-Pacific, SMWS Singapore celebrated by organising its first mock Society Tasting Panel.
That’s where guests convened at LMDW’s Robertson Quay bar to blind-taste 12 SMWS expressions, and then judge and rank which they would bottle. As part of the exercise, each of SMWS Singapore’s mock Tasting Panel was asked to devise original names for each of the top three.
That element of ‘localisation’ only grew when we next hosted a Peranakan pairing dinner at partner bar The Warehouse Hotel. An ethnic group defined by their genealogical descent from the first waves of Southern Chinese settlers to maritime Southeast Asia, Peranakans are the Straits-born Chinese who first inhabited the Malaysian Peninsula, the Indonesian Archipelago and Singapore.
With cuisine characterised by tamarind, sweet palm sugar, plus the aromatic blend of lemongrass, galangal and coconut milk, The Warehouse Hotel provided a delicious – and localised – Peranakan platform for us to enjoy and appreciate SMWS whiskies in this distinctive way. Runner-up on the podium is the expression that intrigued. The rare release for the Highland Festival 2023 from distillery 68, Bake-Off, was renamed ‘Teh O Peng’.
That’s Singaporean for iced tea, a mish-mash of the Chinese dialect Hokkien word ‘teh’ meaning tea, and ‘O’ for kosong – Malay for empty, basically meaning without milk. Suddenly a Society bottling had taken on a very Singaporean slant.
ABOVE: An SMWS whisky tasting paired with timepieces at partner bar WatchBox brought a shared passion together
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
These kind of memorable tastings are excellent ways to keep an increasingly mature Singapore whisky community engaged, and each member event stands as a moment in time. The team at SMWS Singapore appreciates that each member tasting can provide an experience out of the ordinary, something that elevates the act of sharing whisky.
“We’re looking to move beyond the standard whisky tasting format – you know, the one where you sit down, sip four glasses and discuss the flavours,” says Stefano Righetti, SMWS manager at LMDW.
“We want to create a more immersive experience that fosters a community of whisky enthusiasts here in Singapore. Instead of just a static tasting, we aim to make it an event.”
Arun Prashant, co-founder of partner bar The Swan Song, says that the tales SMWS can tell sets it apart: “We believe that each bottler has a story in the arc of single malt Scotch whisky,” he says.
“The SMWS uniqueness in creating a Society for single malt aficionados means that when we get members – both local and especially overseas – we can instantly talk about whisky and the geekiness that sometimes comes with it.”
MOMENTS IN TIME
It’s this streak of individuality among the wider community at the SMWS – not just in bottlings, but also in people and personnel, allowing aspects to remain open to interpretation – that is always refreshing. From my own point of view, it’s fascinating to taste SMWS bottlings through previous periods and eras, distinguished by the different designs of bottle labels, as we experienced at our ‘Tasting Through Time’ event at The Swan Song.
Arun is also a collector of such SMWS vintages. “We are proud to stock SMWS at our bar, including sourcing their older bottlings,” he says. These form part of a burgeoning personal bottle collection whose contents once famously attracted the attention of The Whisky Exchange’s Sukhinder Singh.
Tastings like this show me how the selection of bottlings through time would have involved different people, of different tastes, experiences, palates and preferences, sitting on the Panel.
What was selected would have differed according to who made up the Panel at that moment in time, and that means every SMWS expression and Outturn has been unique – just like each Panel.
ABOVE: Society whiskies and local Peranakan cuisine provided a distinctly Singaporean tasting at the Warehouse Hotel
ABOVE: SMWS Singapore has explored whisky pairings with watches, cuisine and even high end hi-fi systems
The fundamental importance of SMWS labelling conventions without officially disclosing distilleries cannot be denied. As the Singapore whisky community continues maturing in mindset, the provenance of the whisky on the label is not the final arbiter of quality.
Freed from pre-bias, the contents of each SMWS bottle can speak for itself. “Singapore has both a small group of well-educated whisky enthusiasts, and people who are new and keen to explore single malt whisky,” says Arun. “The former are conversant with many independent bottlers, and many of them hold the SMWS in high regard.
“The new whisky drinker is keen to explore whiskies at cask strength and from less ‘famous’ distilleries. Here, the Society’s incredible selection offers variety in terms of distillate style and cask influence. The high quality of cask selections usually means that both the experienced whisky drinker and the novice are often pleasantly surprised.”
WAYS TO EXPLORE
Naturally, there’s still work to be done. This is a local Society that can claim an avant-garde daring that embraces abstractions, like when we organised whisky pairings with timepieces, at partner WatchBox. And separated ashy peat from smoky peat notes as akin to alternative rock being intrinsically different to hard rock, at a music genre tasting at Hi-Fi audio showroom Audio Exotics.
Yet there are times we cling to tangibility for certainty. An SMWS Outturn, or list of expressions to taste, is revealed – only for members to pour over unofficial websites naming and listing full distillery names behind the numbers. That’s the contradiction, sometimes beautifully expressed, and so idiosyncratic to Singapore’s population.
But, as long as Singaporeans remain interested, engaged and curious, there’s hope. After all, the SMWS can exist physically and locationally, anywhere. But it’s only if it exists and lives in the minds of its members that it can claim to have succeeded.
“Our SMWS pairing at WatchBox was an innovative way to explore both the whiskies and the timepieces, and we discovered a surprising number of attendees who are passionate about both!” says Stefano.
“As for the tasting together with Hi-Fi, we explored how sound and music can influence the way we perceive whisky. It went beyond just taste, adding an emotional layer through the power of music.”
More than six months on from the Society’s relaunch in Singapore, it feels like we’re working on something important, and shaping our whisky culture as we grow.
The satisfaction comes from matching some of the lengths the Society goes to in generating interest in its whiskies, doing justice to its passion and being inspired by its creativity – and doing all of that in Singapore’s own small, big way.
ABOVE: The SMWS Singapore relaunch event took place at La Maison Du Whisky Singapore in September last year
PICTURED: Another successful tasting with SMWS Singapore