Company:
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society
Job:
Ambassador
Website:
smws.co.uk
until March of this year I was also working in the world of financial services.
I’ve been a member of SMWS for a long time and I used to do private tastings
and whisky dinners in my spare time. I signed up with the SMWS as an Ambassador
in 2007, initially to do local member tastings, but now I work locally and
further afield.
the G20 leader’s summit in Whitehall in 2009. I followed Jim Murphy who was
Secretary of State for Scotland at the time onto the stage. I think my whisky slot
went down better than his political speech!
Scotland House for the duration of the Olympics. There was a whole series of
formal and informal tastings as ‘Scotland welcomed the World’ in advance of all
the big events happening in Scotland over the next three years.
always brought a bottle of Black Bottle. Others in the family would bring Bells,
Teachers, Black and White etc but Black Bottle was my first and my favourite.
At that time there wasn’t the array of single malts available that there is
today.
family, friends, good times and bad times. It can mean lying on a beach on
Islay at midnight with pals, looking at the stars and passing a bottle round, or
memories of celebrations/commiserations and anticipation of events to come, or
just the drink which brings people together in friendship and camaraderie.
time. Working with the SMWS helps me get some sense of Scottishness back! I have
come to Whisky as an ‘add-on’ career. I don’t have grand ambitions, I would
simply like to continue working with SMWS, maybe on a more extensive basis, all
the time continuing to learn and keeping pace with changes.
My dad and I said Slainthe with a SMWS 76.91 ‘Caballero in an orange grove‘. Distilled
on 23/8/1989 in the heart of Speyside and drank as a cup of good cheer by 2 men
in Glasgow on 19/9/2012.
Aberdeenshire and I paired a 29.115 ‘candy floss in a fairground’ with one of
his rich original recipe cheeses, and we had a ’eureka’ moment! The visitors to
Scotland house loved it as well.
What’s your favourite time and place to enjoy a dram?
With friends before, during or after dinner. No long drawn out swirling ,
sniffing or note taking. Just enjoying the flavour and laughter without any overdone
analysis.
What do you think is going to be the next big thing on the whisky
horizon?
Scotch is booming around the world as we know, and more distilleries in
more countries are and will be producing whisky. I think there will be pressure
on what ‘whisky’ is from some quarters, but Scotch will more than hold its own.
There’s a growing number of younger people, men and women coming to
whisky, with discerning palates and a thirst for knowledge and appreciation,
demanding more and seeking out unusual expressions and bottling’s.
We’ll see expressions continue to be developed for diverse distribution
channels. I guess pressure on stocks and enhanced maturation techniques will
mean marketing and distributing NAS whisky will continue to grow.
What’s the one dram you couldn’t
live without?
Working with the SMWS you have to get used to doing without because of
the single cask uniqueness. But because it was Laphroaig which lit up the world
of single malt for me, and has been my ‘friend’ for such a long time, it would
be the ‘standard’ Laphroaig 10 Year Old.
Who will be the next Whisky Insider? Click back soon to find
out!
The Whisky Wire 
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