The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) has released a limited-edition 18-year-old blended Scotch whisky - a first for the whisky club which launched in 1983.
The Blender’s Notebook is Batch 44 in the Society’s award-winning Heresy range. Launched in 2017, the small-batch label gives the SMWS whisky team licence to experiment with blends, cask combinations and spirits from outside Scotland. The range won Gold with all three of its entries at The Spirits Business’s Scotch Whisky Masters 2026.
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At the heart of the blend is a single sherry butt which held a long-discontinued blended Scotch that has been maturing at batch strength for around 20 years.
The Society’s Whisky Team combined this with 27-year-old grain whisky and malts of around 18 years old, matured in bourbon casks, American oak PX casks and Spanish oak oloroso barrels and hogsheads. The bottled blend is around 70 per cent malt, with a 60/40 split in favour of sherry casks.
The idea for the blend came from the Society’s outgoing whisky director Kai Ivalo before his retirement. He said: “If you’re going to create a Society blended Scotch, you’d better go big, or go home! It should be a high malt content blend with an old-school character and pedigree.”
The bottle’s label follows the same old-school brief, with a design styled on blended Scotch labels of decades past, right down to the thistles and the period wording in the small print.
The Society’s Tasting Panel found linseed oil, apricot jam tarts and greengage plums on the nose, with honeyed melon, Madeira cake and candied pecans on the palate. With water, vanilla fudge and old-style sherry wood come through, before a drying finish.
Julien Willems, whisky quality and sensory panel manager at The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, said: “Heresy has always been the whisky team’s playground, the space where we can have some fun and wander down the paths not taken, and it doesn’t get much more out there than the Society releasing a blended Scotch.
“Coming up with the label for something so unique certainly was barrels of fun, but as flavours go, there’s nothing light-hearted about what’s in the bottle.
“That well-aged sherry butt and PX influence bring real depth and character, the added bourbon casks and American oak add a silky lift for the malt core, all neatly tied together with grain nearly three decades old working as the mortar that keeps it all together.
“But ultimately, it’s the quality of the whiskies and the way their flavours intertwine that makes this blend so special, more than the sum of its parts, and that’s what the Society has always been about.”
Heresy Batch 44 is priced at £80. It is a one-off batch of just 1,092 bottles, on sale now to members of the Society, which anyone can join.