The whiskey world is watching

Picture this — a whiskey made just for you and our fellow Members scores the highest global accolade: World’s Best Irish Single Malt Whiskey.

On Monday we'll see if it does.

At this year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition — aka the “Oscars of Whisky” — a panel of 70 of the world’s foremost whiskey experts scored our Member-exclusive Bushmills 2010 Double Moscatel Cask a whopping 98/100 points and Double Gold. That means it’s now shortlisted with four others to take out the ultimate accolade: Best Single Malt Irish Whiskey.

“Bushmills' Irish Whiskey Causeway Collection 2010 Double Moscatel is a premium single malt that showcases the distillery’s expertise in cask maturation,” said the judges on this year’s panel.

The Bushmills 2010 Double Moscatel Cask is the fourth in a series of collaborations with the world’s oldest licenced whiskey distillery that have become so highly sought-after by the global whiskey community.

In 2020, we launched the 2006 Marsala Cask made exclusively for the Whisky Club. Members loved it. And worldwide whiskey hunters paid silly money to get their hands on it — it went under the hammer for €1560 ($2,400). Members paid just $120.

Then there was the Burgundy Cask, which sold at auction for €1350 ($2,230). Members paid only $135.

And now, already highly awarded, it looks like the Bushmills 2010 Double Moscatel Cask is set on the same trajectory as its predecessors. In the meantime, the whiskey world has no doubt put this whiskey on its must-have list.

It’s not uncommon for whiskies made exclusively for The Whisky Club to end up under the hammer in auction houses across the globe. It’s not surprising considering some of the biggest names in whisk(e)y make one-offs just for the Club. Our Bushmills exclusives in particular draw a lot of interest from overseas collectors eager to get these bottles.

Another whisky that attracted lots of interest from overseas collectors was our Lakes Whiskymaker’s Editions: Voyage. After announcing the Club exclusive in January, we were flooded with requests (and pleas) to ship internationally to people from the US, UK and even Belgium.

It’s thanks to our relationship with the world’s greatest whiskymakers that Club Members get access to whiskies that nobody else on the planet can. And this relationship often sparks the envy of whisky collectors across the globe. Even the media has commented on how lucky our Members are.

A recent Forbes article covering the shortlisted whiskies that are contenders for World’s Best Single Malt Scotch Whisky — one of those being another Club exclusive, the Aberlour 2010 Double Cask Matured — the author commented that it’s almost “unfair” to speak about our whiskies: “It’s almost unfair to even “…as it’s only available to members of an Australian membership service aptly called, The Whisky Club.”

We’ll find out if our Bushmills 2010 Double Moscatel Cask takes the crown on 7 October.