The Society’s Global Gathering — a coming together of members and friends to celebrate flavour.
You might be asking “but Adam, don’t we do that all year round with our experiences?”; you’re right, we do. But does that mean we can’t concentrate on sharing our love of whisky over a specific month with renewed enthusiasm and delight? It does not. Thus, the Gathering — a time to celebrate members, where we began and where we are now, and the thing that binds us all together, the love of full-flavoured whisky.
In recent years since the Gathering’s inception, it’s been customary for each branch to receive the full bottle allocations from a single cask of whisky. For 2025, I had the honour of tasting several cask samples, right at the start of the year, knowing that what I selected would be shared and enjoyed with our entire membership base here in Australia.
Interestingly enough, what I thought would be the pick (based off spec), was not even close, and it was a tight race between two different samples. After tasting it again recently (now that it’s been bottled and labelled), I can confidently say I am happy with the choice I made, and I hope you all are too. Cask 95.105 Into the carpenter’s kitchen is what the panel eventually named my pick and what is your 2025 Australian-exclusive Gathering bottle.
After 11 years of maturation in an ex-bourbon barrel, Euan (our Head of Whisky in Scotland, who oversees all our maturing casks) saw fit to transfer it to a 1st fill HTMC (Heavy Toast, Medium Char) barrel, and I’m glad he did. I’m confident that’s what gave this whisky its unique factor, from this distillery that would be pronounced wrongly if you tried to say it as it’s spelt…
The Gathering bottle goes on sale on October 17th — but you can try it at a slew of Partner Bars around Australia first at a really fantastic price per dram! So, I encourage you all to visit your local Partner Bar and embrace the Gathering spirit; you can find a full list of bars stocking 95.105 on the bar further along in this issue. Plus, we’ve got a very special virtual tasting on offer with the bottle AND four very exclusive bottlings that Matt Bailey himself has had shipped over (you can even win a full set of them if you grab yourself a Gathering bottle…more on that further in this issue!).
There’s a lot going on this month — and there are many more bottles on offer in this Outturn (check out our first Two to One range whisky launching this month!), so be sure to have a proper look at everything that’s going on and embrace the Gathering spirit! We’ll see you at one of our many Gathering experiences happening across the country, or maybe even at one of our Partner Bars!
Cheers
Adam Ioannidis
Marketing Manager
Outturn Editor
