How we create your whisky
Simply put, we work with the world’s best distilleries to bring our Members the most incredible, exclusive whiskies money can buy – every month. That’s it.
We work directly with distilleries – rather than independent bottlers or blenders – to bridge the gap between makers and drinkers, getting you as close as possible to the people who actually make the liquid in your glass.
In practice, this means visiting the distilleries themselves and welcoming distillery teams to Club HQ; working hand-in-hand with Master Distillers and Blenders; hand-selecting casks; and tasting hundreds and hundreds of samples (we turn down around 90% of the whisky that comes our way), all in service of creating the best whiskies, exclusively for the Club and our Members.
Award-winning drams from the biggest names in whisky
All that hard work pays off in the form of great-drinking whisky for our Members, but it’s not just them who appreciate them. Some of the biggest whisky competitions in the world have recognised the quality of our drams – the Club trophy cabinet holds hundreds of gold medals, double golds, and category wins.
Collectors around the world also can’t get enough of our Members-only whiskies, often bidding wild prices at international auctions just to get their hands on a bottle. We’ve seen some go for up to 20 times their original price at auction, but when you’re a Club Member, your bottle is guaranteed, no matter how many awards it wins.
Who we work with
Since 2014, we’ve worked with distilleries and whiskymakers from all over the world:
- 63 from Scotland, including Glenfarclas, Glen Scotia, Aberlour, GlenDronach, and Glenlivet
- 9 from Ireland, including Bushmills, Dunville’s, and Redbreast
- 23 from Australia, including Lark, Starward, and Hellyer’s Road
- 8 from North America
- 3 from Japan
- 1 from New Zealand (watch this space, though)
- And others from France, India, and England
We’ve also been in very early on some rising stars of the industry, unearthing gems from up-and-comers like The Lakes and Westward, while still managing to consistently draw world-firsts and rarities from the big names.
Cask sourcing: an art all of its own
Having been around in some form or another since 1608, you’d expect Bushmills to be pretty well-versed in choosing the right casks for their whiskies, and they are: Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez Sherry, Madeira, Malaga wine, and Ruby Port casks are all used exquisitely in the crafting of their single malts, so when we wanted a distillery to show us what they could do with a really special cask finish, we knew exactly where to go.
And they did not disappoint. The Master Blender presented the world-exclusive, history-making Bushmills 2006 Marsala Cask – the first release in the now-legendary Causeway Collection. Initially matured in Oloroso Sherry and ex-Bourbon barrels, it was then moved to fresh Marsala wine casks for extra body, sweetness and complexity, and as soon as we tasted this malt masterpiece, we knew we had to bring it to our Members.
It was an immediate, sold-out success, and anticipation was sky-high for the next one (overseas collectors were paying $2500 for bottles within months of release). So we couldn’t disappoint, securing Banyuls, Burgundy, and Double Moscatel cask finishes over the next five years, each a standout example of Bushmills’ incredible commitment to the finest casks, and our commitment to bringing them to the Club.
The finest first-fill single barrels, chosen for you
Balvenie’s bondstores are about as close as you’ll get to actual heaven, and home to some of the most sumptuous first-fill American Oak barrels in the whisky world. The depth and quality of their warehouse stocks are legendary, and a single barrel Balvenie is a rare beast indeed – they even stopped releasing new ones in 2021.
But we knew how good they could be (we’d managed to secure some for Members back in 2015), so we got to work on bringing the Single Barrel 12 Year Old back, exclusively for the Club. Working directly with Balvenie’s Malt Master Kelsey McKechnie, we got unprecedented access to the bondstores, right next to the person responsible for making Balvenie, well, Balvenie.
The results were incredible: classic, first-fill, single barrel Balvenie single malt, just for the Club.
Make the whisky you’ve always dreamed of making
That was the opportunity we brought to Aberlour’s Master Blender, Sandy Hyslop. We’d already worked with the iconic distillery on introducing our Members to a swathe of delicious, previously unseen drams from the Aberlour stable, but this time we wanted something totally unique – a true one-off, just for the Club.
The whisky exceeded all our (very high) expectations. The first ever vintage of their flagship multi-gold-winning Double Cask Release, the 2010 Double Cask absolutely blew our socks off, and we weren’t alone: it scored 99/100 and picked up a double gold at 2024’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition, putting it alongside whiskies like the Tomatin 45 Year Old, which retails for a cool $14,000.
Giving whisky makers the chance to create the whisky they’ve always dreamed of, exclusively for our Members?
This is why we Whisky Club.