Episode 77: Brutal Islay weather, direct fired stills & peated Lowland whisky | July Outturn Podcast

This month Calum and Duncan tuck into some unusual cask types, taste whisky from Taiwan and find the perfect introduction to peat. Our latest Creators Collection, Tales of the Worm Tub, transports the duo back in time as they experience a different era of Scotch whisky distillation.

This month Duncan and Calum are joined by Society brand ambassador and member services executive, Francesco Ramella. While finding out what's on offer in the July Outturn, the trio remember their favourite outdoor adventures and discuss Francesco's whisky journey.

This month Calum and Duncan are joined by Logan Shaw, the assistant venue manager at our Queen Street Members’ Room. With hip flasks in hand, the three get stuck into this month’s Outturn with plenty of adventures, stories and drams along the way.

This month Calum and Richard are joined by The Scotch Malt Whisky Society's Anthony Delcros as the trio prepare for this year’s whisky festivals. Anthony reveals his own whisky journey while covering all the adventures he has planned to take the Society’s tastings off the beaten track at the Speyside, Campbeltown and Islay festivals.

This month Calum and Richard get zen as they’re guided through a ‘dramaste’ styled tasting by Lucy Connor. Lucy took a day out from her time behind the bar at The Vaults to chat through this year’s International Women’s Day bottlings, discuss some of her maverick tasting ideas, and share her own whisky journey.

Richard and Calum catch up with Matt Bailey, who recently joined The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s European team as managing director. The trio discuss Tasmanian whisky, psychotic dram decisions and delve into some of the Society bottlings coming out in the UK and Europe in February.

Scotch Malt Whisky Society ambassador and Tasting Panel chairperson Olaf Meier is a fountain of knowledge, driven by a limitless number of whisky stories and a huge passion for the Society and the wider whisky world. Olaf now finds himself celebrating his 20th year representing the Society. Despite having more than two decades of whisky experience, Olaf started his journey with humble beginnings, as Duncan Gorman finds out.

In this episode we’re going on a special journey across Spain, to tell the story of whisky and sherry and the wonderful synergy between the two worlds when it comes to sherry cask matured whisky. We travel to the oak forests of Galicia in the far northwest of Spain to take the creation of Spanish oak casks right back to the beginning, in the Cantabrian forest, before heading south to Jerez and the Sherry Triangle, to visit the cooperages and bodegas where the casks are built and then seasoned with different styles of sherry wine.

Regular listeners will know that we are fortunate at The Scotch Malt Whisky Society to welcome representatives from distilleries, who visit us in our Members’ Rooms, share some special samples of their whiskies with our members, and give us their insights and knowledge about their distilleries. In March we had a visit to the Vaults by Heemanshu Ashar from Paul John, the pioneering Indian distillery based in Goa on the country’s tropical west coast. Before enjoying the tasting, we took the chance to find out more about Paul John distillery, India’s whisky journey since independence in 1947 and what tropical maturation brings to this spirit.