Originally published in February Unfiltered 2025
Words: Richard Goslan
The Society’s Tasting Panel is fundamentally unchanged since it first formed in founder Pip Hills’s kitchen in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, but more rigorous than ever. Its mission – to assess every sample before it can make it into a Society bottle, to create a name and tasting note and to uphold the Society’s mission: to leave no nose upturned.
“It would be a shame to describe such lovely whisky in mere words. Perhaps a pibroch* would do.”
If a literary great such as Hamish Henderson struggled to find the right language to capture the complexity and depth of the whisky in his tasting glass, what hope for us mere mortals?
Hamish was a poet, songwriter, soldier – he personally oversaw the formal surrender of Italy in 1945 – folklorist, co-founder of Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies and passionate whisky enthusiast. He was also an acquaintance of SMWS founder Pip Hills, who invited him to participate in an early incarnation of what would become the Society’s revered Tasting Panel.
The primary intention was around quality control – with the Panel’s main purpose to sample various whiskies before deciding whether they were worthy enough to make it into a green Society bottle and offered up to members. More than that, though, the Tasting Panel set out to actually describe the stuff.
We might take that for granted nowadays, but in the early 1980s the language to talk about whisky barely existed, although an early version of the whisky ‘flavour wheel’ had recently been created by scientists at Pentlands Research, now The Scotch Whisky Research Institute. At the time, whisky was invariably described only in basic terms of how old it was or where it came from, but with little reference or even interest in its actual flavour. All that was about to change, with or without Hamish Henderson’s input.
Whisky writer Charlie MacLean was an early member of the Tasting Panel and a subsequent long-serving chair. He recalls the Society’s groundbreaking role in defining how we discuss whisky and flavour.
“The SMWS was the first organisation to focus on flavour, and really invented a new language to talk about whisky,” he says. “The whole point of the Society’s single cask bottlings is in their variety, they can be so extraordinarily different, and the Tasting Notes need to reflect that.”
The Tasting Panel has always been multinational and includes both women and men – so everyone brings their own points of reference to the whiskies. A discerning nose and the ability to judge a whisky are key attributes for any panellist, as well as impartiality in their opinions.
“People come in and they don’t necessarily know the history of the cask or what project it’s a result of, like we do in the Whisky Team,” says the Society’s head of whisky creation, Euan Campbell. “That gives us a chance to put whiskies in front of other expert noses for their opinion. It also means we can cast our net wide because everyone has different sensory abilities, so we’re utilising that across a wider pool of people.
“I think our Tasting Panel is unique in the sense that while we’re looking at it from a quality point of view, we also look at it from the point of view of a member sitting in their armchair pouring a dram. So we have this balance between the technical quality factor and the enjoyment factor, which perhaps some other panels don’t have as much focus on.”
Julien Willems from the Whisky Team co-ordinates the Tasting Panel and arranges each session and who will be participating in each one from the wider pool.
“Having a multicultural Panel and different experiences brings a lot of wealth into what we can put forward,” he says. “Not everything is to everyone’s palate, but the Society aims to satisfy the widest number of members across different cultures and around the world.”
So whether your Society whisky inspires a poetic flight of the imagination or a pibroch, let’s celebrate the work of the Tasting Panel and the outstanding quality of the whiskies they allow to pass under their scrupulous noses and into our bottles.
If you’re feeling adventurous, why not set up your own informal Tasting Panel with some friends and try the experience for yourselves? It might just inspire you to some whisky-related poetry – or maybe even a pibroch.
*Pibroch: an extended solo composition played on the bagpipes
