A Christmas collection of whiskies from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society has gathered several quality malt whiskies to toast Christmas and into the New Year. Jeremy Webb samples a few drams from a variety of bottles. He is sure to have a merry Christmas.

Each Scotch Malt Whisky Society bottle has extraordinary names; the first I tasted is no exception.

The Brusque and Broad-Shouldered. £106.90

Sipping the Brusque and Broad-Shouldered, you first get juicy, booze-soaked sultanas and raisins. Then came botrytis grapes, game stocks, dunnage earthiness, and salted caramel, which were genuinely unusual. The sherry influence was drying, leathery, and full of mineral oils.

Reducing the whisky made it fattier and wider in profile, along with some notes of aromatic mulling spices, coffee grounds, bitter dark chocolate, and rum 'n' raisin ice cream. In the mouth, it tastes of darkly fruity flapjacks, cocktail bitters, further big and generous earthy notes, dried mint, and salted liquorice.

The whisky is powerful but complex, and reduction brings further notes of roasted hazelnuts, ginger cake, butter icing, dried citrus peels and cough mixtures.

It matured in a bourbon hogshead for 13 years before being transferred to a first-fill American oak PX hogshead.

If you want to sample a variety of malts without investing in full bottles, then the Scotch Malt Whisky Society has selection boxes called,

A DRAM GOOD CHRISTMAS

£35.00 for three 50ml bottles.

A Dram Good Christmas is a special festive tasting pack. Inside, you’ll find three 50ml drams of single malt whiskies with tasting cards full of details about the three whiskies. The whiskies come from all twelve of SMWS’ flavour profiles, so while each pack will be slightly different, they guarantee that the drams inside will convey your tidings of joy. Buy it for the whisky lover in your life, or treat yourself and toast in Advent and Hogmonay.

I tasted the three miniatures: Breakfast, But Mostly Dessert, then A Coal Skuttle of Jam and Treacle, and finally Fresh and Floral, Smooth and Silky.

Breakfast, But Mostly Dessert, which is £125 a bottle, wakes you up with the smell of unsmoked bacon rolls on a mahogany plank, a fresh pint of amber ale and beeswax candles; you then get carried swiftly to dessert. The palate was full of choux pastry, chantilly cream, chocolate-coated Turkish delight, and bananas foster, with a lightly spiced finish.

Adding water, the nose showed more floral qualities, along with lemon sherbets, linen jackets and new leather boots filled with lychees and peaches. The finish on the palate becomes pistachio ice cream served with strawberries and mascarpone.

A Coal Skuttle of Jam and Treacle delivers a thick and syrupy Pedro Ximenez sherry infused with fragrant smoke, oozed over toasted peanuts and red berry fruits on a thick slab of sugary toffee. The palate is a compounded partnership of tinned fruit, blood oranges and dried herbs, swirling together in an old coal scuttle and topped with cinnamon, ginger and ash.

Adding water released further treacle, toffee, and honey, still in a dusty old coal scuttle but now with dried flowers and lemon zest. The palate had somewhat softened; however, it embraces peat-smoked flapjacks, dark berry jam, roasted peaches with thyme sprigs, and the light sweetness of mead on the finish.

Fresh and Floral, Smooth and Silky, brings an initial nose suggesting an uplifting summer dram, fresh, floral, delicate, and refined: lemon meringue pie, oranges, green apples, and a fuchsia hedge buzzing with bees. The mouthfeel was sweet and silky, with lemon curd, pear flan, sherbet straws, caramel biscuits and honey, although the finish had clean, dry oak and citric chilli tingles.

The reduced nose conveyed sun-warmed haystacks, golden syrup, vanilla custard slices, lemon bonbons and acid drops. The easy-drinking palate went from white chocolate, lemon tart and scones with clotted cream and strawberries to a dry finish of Japanese green tea, oaked chardonnay, peppercorns and clove.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.