It’s the most wonderful time of the year — the whisky festivals! May is all about the annual Scotch whisky festivals that take place in Scotland over May. It’s an exciting and highly-anticipated celebration of the five Scotch whisky regions and the unique flavours that they bring to the table. There are local festivities and exclusive releases, with Fèis Ìle (Islay’s festival) being the most anticipated!

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society is once again proud to be releasing Scotch whisky festival casks exclusively for our SMWS members — and the best part? Our Australian members will get to try them (and purchase them) at the same time as the members in the UK will! For the Fèis festivals this year, SMWS Australia will be releasing a very exciting 10 festival casks this year — that’s seven single malt Rare Release casks and three single casks.

To celebrate the 2023 Scotch Whisky Festivals, we’re throwing our largest club promotion to date — the chance to win all 10 festival casks valued at over $3000!

All you have to do is join The Scotch Malt Whisky Society during the month of May (before May 31, 11:59pm AEST, to be precise) and you’ll automatically go into the running to win the full set of seven Rare Releases, and three single casks bottled to commemorate the 2023 Scotch Whisky Festivals.

Already a member? Not a problem, you just have to refer a friend to join The Society (make sure they put your name in the referrers box when signing up) and you’ll automatically be entered into the running.

The winner will be announced on the 1st of May. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to win ALL 10 official festival casks from The Scotch Malt Whisky Society — specially bottled to commemorate the 2023 Scotch Whisky Festivals.

For 2023, the Australian branch will be celebrating the Whisky festivals with ten unique casks. Seven of those casks will be small batch single-malt Rare Releases (with at least one cask from each region) that have been carefully matured, approved and bottled to represent each of the five Scotch Whisky regions and their synonymous flavours. The final three will be single-cask releases, two from Islay and one from Speyside. There will be no ballots for these festival casks — they will be publicly available on a week-by-week basis following the release of Outturn throughout May. This is such a rare and unique opportunity to be able to acquire and taste the special commemorative festival bottlings in Australia at the same time as those in the UK will be.

FESTIVAL SINGLE CASKS

In addition to our festival tastings all across Australia, we’re also hosting not one, but TWO virtual tastings this May! The first virtual pack (which is on sale now) is ‘The Director’s Big 5 Festivals Pack’, with Matt Bailey’s hand-selected favourites from this year’s festival bottlings — this virtual will take place on Tuesday, May 9, at 7pm AEST.

The second virtual tasting kit is the full 10 festival casks — that’s 10x 30ml samples of the seven Rare Releases, and the three festival single casks. This is it, the full set — on sale on Outturn day, May 5, midday AEST. You can tune into our YouTube channel for this livestream on Tuesday, May 23, 7pm AEST.