Matt Bailey

The Welcome back to Gathering

September is a special month for the SMWS, around the world. It’s a month where we celebrate the coming together across the world to share in tasty and enjoyable single casks, where the community becomes the core of what we are all about. It’s a month where no matter how, no matter where, we get to come together and share in the best of what whisky can do. Whether huddled around a bonfire, or the warm surrounds at home, or one of our Partner Bars, or one of our venues around the world, or gathered at one of our incredible events, the Gathering brings us together to celebrate.

As is the tradition for our Gathering, we also have a full cask to share around for the month. The brief is the same, but the flavour is always different: A full cask of something fun, approachable, and sharable that can be gleefully popped open in a social setting and enjoyed by every member & friend along the way. For September, it was our members who picked out Cask 46.116, but it was ultimately NSW member Mark Garroway who took the honour of naming it ‘Snickerdoodle!’. By the time you’re reading this, Mark will probably know his name was selected and he’s got a bottle heading his way as congratulations.

We weren’t able to receive as many names this time around due to a mixture of production delays and pandemic-related issues with sharing whisky around, but we still managed to get around 100 x entries this year and there was something just fantastic about the idea of the flavour of Cask 46.116 being close to the Snickerdoodle biscuit. For those unaware, a Snickerdoodle is a biscuit with ingredients like flour, butter, sugar, salt, and then generously rolled in cinnamon. The recipe will often use a cream of tartar and baking soda giving the biscuit a slightly tangy and zesty note. Like most baking classics, the ingredients are simple, but success comes down to choosing the best quality ingredients, the right mix of each, and that perfectly uniform heat in baking them. Sounds a bit like whisky production when you think about it.

So with that said, a massive congratulations to SMWS member Mark Garroway who named our Gathering cask for 2022, and I’m sure he’d agree with me that this whisky goes very well with a freshly baked Snickerdoodle! Myself and our wonderful state managers will be already roaming around with the 2023 Gathering sample soon seeking names for next year, but in the meantime, slainté, and happy Gathering month!

Cheers.

“It’s a month where no matter how, no matter where, we get to come together and share in the best of what whisky can do”

Matt Bailey ~

SMWS National Ambassador