Warms The Cockles Of Your Heart | 53.6% ABV
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
Turbo blueberry muffins – a delicious time-capsule from Caperdonich.
Is SMWS A Club You Want To Be A Part Of?
To the east of my sitting position here in the Perth & Kinross-shire countryside, the soft rolling farmland arrives at the foot of the Lomond hills and rapidly upwards does the green grass go.
On the ridge-line, walkers from the local hiking club traverse the contours over to the adjoining Bishop hill; the white golf-ball cap of the Met-Office rain radar station glows brightly – one of four dotted across the country to give weather boffins a better idea of where and when the rain was, is and will be falling. It’s not raining today and in the blue skies above the lush hill, a glider from the local club glints for a fleeting moment in the summer sunshine as it pirouettes on its wingtip; this one vying with the other silent soarers for flight-extending thermal pockets.
To the north, more soft rolling farmland stretches into the horizon with shallow hills obscuring the mountainous Highland vista beyond. The cycling club in a peloton of 20 or so, blow past the house with each ultra-light carbon frame buzzing on noisy freewheels; snippets of conversations are caught in the wake. Upwards, the tin roof of the curling club juts into view, with the flat roof of the bowling club looming across the road. In the nearby west sits the M90 motorway, slicing its noisy grey path through all of the undulating green, yellow and brown and, if you continue on, further west as the crow flies, Stirling, Falkirk and eventually Glasgow can be found.
To the south is Loch Leven and the fishing club; a noisy motor wails, attached to a small boat journeying into the middle of the mirrored water, with hopes of a nice fishy dinner later that evening. Over Benarty Hill and into Fife where the car clubs come together in a blaze of neon lights and straight-through Honda Civic exhausts. Further on south flows the Forth Estuary and towering above are three of Scotland’s iconic bridges: the Forth Bridge, Forth Road Bridge and our 21st century sculptural art piece, the Queensferry Crossing. If you were to travel over this wiry white and concrete grey sky-platform, and continue on east for 10 miles, you’d arrive in the bustling tourism capital of Scotland; the city of towns old and new, the theatre of dreams – Auld Reekie hersel’: Edinburgh.
The city of Edinburgh recently won an award for the best city in the world, when Time Out announced their annual list, and it’s easy to see why; regardless of the weather, the cobbled streets of the city are the most enchanting places to be. Authors have used Edinburgh as a dramatic backdrop for wildly successful novels and book clubs have rejoiced at the magical imagery the vennels (those tight passageways between buildings), hand-painted shop signs and wrought-iron fencing permit. Movie directors have also leveraged the historic façades and pre-modernised outskirts of the city for many cinematic endeavours.
In our amber world, Johnnie Walker Princes Street was completed in 2021 and is their own shrine to uisge beatha: a sparkling timber-clad, gilt-edged, conveyor belted 72,000sq/ft mega-experience. The Scotch Whisky Experience sits high on the Royal Mile and is a stone’s throw from the majestic Edinburgh Castle and whips tourists in their droves along mechanised barrel rides, educating them in the history and process of creating our nation’s most beloved spirit.
Along the northern-coastal edge of the city in the once downcast but now slowly rejuvenating port of Leith, is where we find the home of a more unique style of club, one exclusively focused on the golden nectar we all enjoy. With the filigree Scotch Malt Whisky Society logo and phrases such as “member’s room” and “a trusted hostelry”, it immediately promotes an air of secrecy. In a twist of bureaucracy, there’s a stipulation for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s Queen Street walk-in townhouse that demands you refrain from wearing flip flops and opt for tailored shorts, if you must wear shorts at all. To the layperson, like me, it initially appears like one of the ugly totems of wealth that can be witnessed in most of Scotland’s “tour” grade golf course clubhouses. The places where folk that can afford to exist in such places frown upon crew-necked shirts and indulge in waving their “members only” phallic replacement pin badges about, and enjoy being addressed by their first name despite having visited the place twice in a decade.
I’ve avoided looking into the SMWS for a number of reasons. The first is my uneducated disregard for the entire shooting match on account of the very specific methods of presenting their whisky to members. Each whisky has coloured bits which represent different things and each bottle also has a code, which means something, and the distillery is never named directly. Instead, they opt for quirky phrases such as “Film Star Hang Out at Smokers’ Corner” and “Porridge of Dreams”; each phrase representing the quintessence of that whisky.
All of the bottles are presented at cask strength, something that not only wasn’t done in 1970 when Pip Hills, founder of SMWS, discovered drinking whisky directly from the cask was far superior to the watered down blended options available in the shops – but was actively frowned upon. It wasn’t jazz, man. That was until the SMWS was created in 1983 to the wondrous rapture of whisky boffins across the country, and thereafter setting a trajectory for the style of whisky presentation that is prevalent, and appreciated today. Thank you Pip Hills!
The second reason I’ve avoided the SMWS is the requirement to become a member before you’re allowed to buy any of the whisky – a £65 downpayment in 2022. This 12-month membership doesn’t get you anything other than access – a foot in the door; you can’t just sashay into any SMWS location and drink the bar dry free gratis, but you can get access to member’s only areas of the member’s clubs, events, as well as inside scoops, discounts on bottles, the periodical to thumb through and the chance to buy member’s only releases. Oh, and one of those pin-badges.
The third reason I’ve avoided SMWS is that, to fully exploit your membership, it pays to live near an SMWS venue and, owing to my semi-Teuchter placement in this world, I don’t. Unless a long bus ride is undertaken or a more complex car-train-drink-train-taxi arrangement is worked out, I have no real convenient way to frequent the SMWS. I’ve just not got on board with it, I’m sorry to say. It would’ve remained that way into the far future too, had it not been for a recent pilgrimage into the crystal clinking, glowing amber dreamland of Wally’s Superden. I have a new level of respect for a person’s commitment to our drink of choice having been there, and a reaffirmation that Wally is the perfect leader for Dramface, and all the other whisky things he does as well. I could spend all day chatting to him, and I genuinely hope to do so again soon. I left his crystal palace with a few interesting things under my arms (and his, too) – things that will assist me in my quest to diverge, and in the process, expand my knowledge and appreciation of whisky. That I’m able to do such a thing is a privilege that I’m very much acutely aware of. Not everyone has a Wally, or indeed anyone as kind, generous and supportive as him. For that, I’m really quite thankful. And I’m grateful. And blessed.
Review
SMWS 38.28, Caperdonich 25yo, 53.6% ABV
£275 in stock at time of writing
One of the treats I carried home from the bustling, cultural city of Glasgow to the quaint, quiet countryside, was a SWMS bottle: tall dark green glass, copper gilt labelling, purple accents and the title “Warms the Cockles of Your Heart”. Wally, at handover, quickly explained what everything meant on the label in a way that I immediately began to understand and, in the briefest of moments, appreciate the draw of this exclusive club. The first step is the coding system – the digits that identify the distillery from which this spirit has been created.
The number before the decimal point represent the distillery, with the following number signifying the number of casks the SMWS has released from that specific distillery. For example, if this was the 3rd cask bottled by Scotch Malt Whisky Society from distillery number 24, it would have the code 24.3, and so on. SMWS doesn’t explain these codes and it’s only through the medium of Google can I find out what they mean. Some folk, like Wally, have these numbers etched into their eyelids, but for someone like me, it’s Googlin’ time.
This bottle has the code 38.28 – meaning it’s the 28th cask bottled by SMWS from distillery number 38: Caperdonich. Caperwhonow? The portal into whisky history has been ripped open, and now I’m learning. Opened in 1898, this place was initially described as an “extension distillery” – a conjoined secondary distillery that increases the capacity of a main distillery through the replication of each part; stills, washbacks and processes included. It was originally called “Glen Grant No.2” but lasted only four years before closing in 1904, owing to lack of demand in the additional spirit it was producing. The malting floors and kiln continued to operate, however, supplying the main Glen Grant distillery with a steady flow of products to distil. The Caperdonich copper stills lay empty and dormant for another 60 years until international demand surged and the stills were filled rapidly once again.
An expansion of Glen Grant No.2 in 1967 added two more stills to increase capacity, and finally was given its own name Caperdonich. Pernod Ricard bought the distillery in 2001 but mothballed it the following year. The site was sold to neighbouring Forsyths – coppersmiths of distillation equipment and off-shore mechanical pressure vessels fame – who demolished the distillery in 2011 to expand their own bustling business and make way for new facilities. Two of the unloved stills from Caperdonich made their way to the Belgian Owl distillery, while the other stills are being installed at the new Falkirk distillery. Caperdonich will live on, vicariously, through these new outlets.
Rounding out the SMWS bottle presentation we have the colour coding system, which is a 12-part quick reference guide for smell and taste. Again it’s quite hard to find any explanation for this on the SMWS website – maybe they wait until you have your pin badge affixed before giving you a run-down of it all, but the codes, thanks to Google, mean thus:
3 shades of green from light to dark – representing light, peated and heavily peated whisky respectively.
3 shades of blue, again from light to dark – representing “light & delicate”, “Juicy, Oak & Vanilla” and “Oily & Coastal”, respectively.
3 shades of purple, light to dark – representing “Young & Spirity”, “Sweet, Fruity & Mellow” and “Sweet & Spicy”, respectively once again.
3 colours of yellow, orange and red. The yellow is “Spicy & Dry”, the orange is “Deep, Rich & Dried Fruits” and the red, much like me, is “Old & Dignified”. Respectfully.
Reading about, and understanding all this, is a task – I need to reassess my whole approach to whisky to mentally align with the blinkered approach to whisky the SMWS favour. The idea being that you put all your presumptions, assumptions and allegiances aside, in favour of an open mind and the ability to be surprised. With the colour coding system you can find the general area of interest you want to head into and then, using the phrase emblazoned in the middle, you find the sentiment of what this bottle represents. Finally, if you really want, you can look at the small print showing the distillery number, region, out-turn, distillation date and subsequent age. Speaking of which, this Caperdonich whisky was distilled in 1994, the year the Channel Tunnel was opened, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump and the first episode of Friends were released. The same year also saw Sony launch the original Playstation in Japan and the UK’s National Lottery drew their first millionaire-carrot-waving ticket. Things were arguably simpler back then. I’m not sure climate change was even on the farthest reaching radars and whisky was still a quiet little pastime for auld gits in the pub. Oh, how we’ve grown; how far we’ve come.
This means the Caperdonich inside this bottle is 25 years old; bottled in 2019 in an out-turn of 241 bottles using a second fill, ex-bourbon barrel to take this spirit through maturation, exiting the cask at 53.6% ABV. The label is black, and I don’t know why – the other SMWS releases are mostly white, but this and some selected others, are black. I’ll add it to the growing list of shoulder-shrugging “SMWS Quirks”.
Score: 7/10
Very Good Indeed.
TL;DR
The most Kingsbarns Kingsbarns to date.
Nose
Startling purple fruits – a really clear note of blueberry muffins. Then one of those synthetic Jelly Belly car air fresheners – the bright blue one. Permanent marker pens and soft toffee. Water dulls everything quite significantly. Nice sawn cedar wood and linseed oil. Yeasty, bready. Hint of stale coffee. A jute sack of rice and a whiff of a rubber ball. Toffee served in an oakwood box.
Palate
Starts off meandering before rocketing to a tropical, stone fruit bonanza. There’s loads going on, from watery mango blocks to dark juicy blueberries. Date and walnut loaf. Water brings out a yeasty sweetness at first, then a tropical rounded tartness shortly after. That cedar wood note from the nose appears here too – manifesting as a linseed oiled table leg, turned on a lathe; a little bit of burnishing heat making it all invitingly fragrant.
The Dregs
The spirit inside this bottle is old, and it embraces age by being a bit slow on the entrance. It’s like turbo lag: I’ve pushed the pedal down and I’m braced for impact, but the engine only changes pitch slightly before a rapidly rising crescendo of whistling engine roar and surge of power arrives, smashing you into the seat with arms barely able to control the direction of which you’re heading – which happens to be straight into a woodworking shop. It’s brilliant fun, this. As more sips are delivered, the pace settles into a nice, comfortably furnished and decadently catered bullet train. I’m aware that outside the window the landscape is moving by at warp speed but here, inside this wee tastefully lit cabin, a cello has just fired up and it’s just me and the delicious aroma of cedar wood, luscious fruits and a slow tilt into whisky bliss.
Whisky is a time-machine. I don’t really think of whisky ages from a distillation perspective – I just think of an 18 year old whisky as being 18 years old. That’s it. For some reason this SMWS 38.28 has made me think of the year it was distilled and casked – 1994 – and being the youth I was, not knowing what life was yet to reveal to me. For me, the 90s was all cycling, football and butchering the guitar. As the millennium approached, the barrier of romantic attraction to other people had been breached and battling with being horrifically bullied would be the catalyst for a motivation and desire to succeed, that still burns brightly within me today. Those halcyon days of summer holidays and Radiohead’s OK Computer made me feel like there was some hope, albeit through the prism of minor keys and hauntingly beautiful voices.
Maybe my retrospection is because Wally gave me the bottle to try and I’m attaching a bit more scrutiny to it than I usually would. Maybe it’s because I’ve not had unfettered access to any whisky older than 21 years until now, apart from the wee samples I’ve received that disappear before I get a chance to form any realistic opinion. Maybe it’s because I’m now able to see what the draw is of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society club, and how it permits all levels of whisky drinker to approach whisky from the perspective of flavour and openness. Try it first and then form an opinion. I love the whole idea of it – whisky promiscuity, as it’s been called elsewhere – putting the experience of trying a whisky blind with very little data; only a romantic notion of what this liquid might make you feel, through those little quirky phrases on the label.
It’s a great concept and I think, now that I’ve tried it first-hand, it has the potential to make folk like me, in their developmental phase of whisky enjoyment, discover some really mind-bending things.
However. Given that the entry into this world of blinkered drams comes at a not-inconsequential fee, and that the place to try these whiskies is prohibitively far away from me, means that the realities of me investing into the SMWS world is still not quite there, yet. My uncle, of sailing and pontoon altercation fame, lives in Edinburgh so I’m considering it more and more. We could get a membership between us and, owing to the three guest allowance, start to dig into this gargantuan world of anonymised whisky experiences.
Is it an expensive way to discover whisky, given that their bar pricing isn’t drastically cheaper than going to a normal bar and working through their stocks? Probably not, if that’s how you want to discover whisky. I’m more of the “buy a bottle and discover over many months” kinda guy, so that pub-style route is always going to be harder for me to trek, but I’m now wondering if it’s more interesting for folk on a whisky experience expansion program like me, to buy into their world just to get access to their interesting bottles. Looking at what’s available post-induction, they’re all pretty much in-line with other independent bottlers – an 8yo cask strength whisky might set you back £49, for example. You can get an 18yo for £90 which, in the current hyperinflation of older stocked OB’s, is pretty enticing. This bottle, a 25yo from a distillery not even of this earth any more, is touching the upper echelons of 300 big ones. Despite what I maybe once claimed on a certain podcast regarding spending large amounts on a whisky, I’m starting to think if the SMWS gives me access to flavour experiences that I wouldn’t find easily elsewhere, it might just be enough to push me towards a SMWS membership. Maybe.
This whisky, in all the blue-fruited deliciousness, has certainly impressed me enough to think more seriously about joining SMWS – if I lived closer to Edinburgh I’d probably already have that pin-badge firmly sellotaped to my chest and be striding, with intent, into the Vaults of Leith wearing nothing but flip-flops.
My humble thanks to our Wally, for the opportunity to experience Caperdonich’s echoing presence.
Score: 7/10
