It is only normal for people with an common interest to come together and share their passion. If you like to drink a dram or two now and then, and you bring that passion over to your friends, sooner or later you'll find yourself sitting together with your friends where each of you brought his own bottles.

Sharing and discussing Single Malts in a group is fun, when sharing descriptions nothing is more fun then agreeing and recognizing each others descriptions for a particular not found in a Malt. Also sharing each other's experience in the field of Malts really helps you build up your own knowledge in the field of Single Malt Whisky. Not to mention to get the possibility to taste Malts you might have otherwise never considered buying.

Organizing a Nosing & Tasting session is not too hard if you follow a few simple rules. If you get the right type of people together, and you provide the right conditions, it should all roll out to a memorable evening, just like any other social gathering.

What type of Nosing & Tasting Session?

First you should think of what type of session you want to have. You want to organize a blind tasting session where the participants don't know up front which Malts they will going to be tasting? If so, you will need to prepare the bottles, removing the labels, and pick out your malts in such a way to suit a blind tasting. You might want to grab totally different Malts, or contrary for more experienced people, you might actually take Malts that fit really close into a certain profile and see if the participants will be able to pick out the correct distillery name. Doing this you might even introduce a competition element in the evening.

A evening with a theme is also a popular way to organize a session. "Island Hopping" or "Downstream over the River Spey" are just some themes you can quickly come up with. But also a vertical tasting of expressions from a single distillery is a good theme. Who wouldn't want to taste a Ardbeg Provenance, 1975 OB, 1977 OB, 30 year OB and a Committee bottling on one evening?

Among your friends you can of course organize a session the "Dutch Party" way. Each participant will bring a bottle which he likes to share with the rest on the session. This often brings a bottle that will surprise you, as you might taste a Malt you would never have considered buying yourself. Sometimes you will see real gems popping up. In some cases it might be wise to have some rules up front about what prices a bottle is allowed to cost maximal and minimal, as to not cause any friction later on!

Finally, you have the type of tasting where one person leads, entertains and explains the "crowd" about the Malts in the sessions. But if you are organizing this type of session, you most likely don't need this article to guide you!

What do we need?

Just putting the bottles on the table is not going to work obviously, to start we will need some proper glasses. In a previous article we discussed the type of glasses being used in Single Malt Nosing & Tasting already. If it is going to be hard to get a set of the same glasses, you could use for example Cognac glasses. If possible, give everyone the same type of glass so there will be no difference in the nose between people because of a different glass.

Many like to add a little water to the Whisky to reduce the strong effect of alcohol to the nose. Indeed, tasting several Whiskies after another might numb the nose after a while making it very hard to fully appreciate the subtle aroma's in the Whiskies to come. Many prefer to use a straw or pipette to get the right amount of water in their glass. Have a few around, and keep an eye on them, as often they will disappear without a trace!

Between the different Malts it is wise to give the palate a bit of rest. There are as many alternatives as there are people, but unsalted crackers and white bread are some off the all time favorites. Some also prefer smoked salmon, which is of course also a more luxurious alternative to dry bread!
Something that will also be a nice opportunity to be a little snack in between is some cheeses. Do not pick any heavy tasting ones like blue cheese, but cheese's like Dutch "Young Cheese", which wont dominate your palate for the next few hours! Some other easy to get alternatives are nuts. And finally one of the weirder alternatives: black coffee. This is actually one Whisky writer Jim Murray recommends in tasting sessions he gives.

For those who like to keep notes, but forgot to bring paper and pencils it might be handy to have something within reach.

For the rest a lot depends on your personal preferences. Personally I love to get a little ambiance with putting on a few candles, and playing fitting background music. Many popular collection CD's with "Celtic" somewhere in the name might be really cliché, but they can do the trick very well. Those who like a little more power check out Clann An Drumma (sponsored by Ardbeg!) and Saor Patrol. They feature a sort of "tribal" music involving a piper with lots of drums. If you shop around you also might find CD's with a recorded Ceilidh, a traditional Scottish party with life music.

Which Whiskies will we choose?

Picking out the whiskies should be done with care. If you have a theme session the theme of the evening will help you decide which expressions to get. Otherwise you will have to pick out the expressions yourself.

Important is the order in which to taste the Whiskies. Starting off witch a Laphroaig, followed by a Talisker, and then moving to a Scapa wont do the Scapa much good. Instead you should start with more delicate Malts, and progress towards the more pronounced ones later in the evening. A very crude rule would be to start with any Lowland expressions, then Speyside, Highlands, Islands and to end with a Islay.

This rule should not be followed blindly however, as some Malts have a profile entirely unlike their geographical location. The classic example is the Bunnahabhain from Islay which is very unlike the peatmonsters you normally associate with Islay. Of course you best pick out Malts you know so you know in what order you should put them. If you want help picking out Malts and determine in which order to drink them, the book "Whisky Classified" might be of good help for you. Stepping away from the traditional classification based on geographical location, the write David Wishart puts Single Malts based on the same profile into clusters. Using this system you could easily pick out Malts for a tasting session, and determine in what order to taste them.
There is of course always the searchable tasting notes database on this web site too, where you can look up a certain malt and see what others think of it.

I hope this guide is of aid to you when your organizing a Nosing & Tasting Session. If you organized one be sure to let us know how it went using the form below! If you have any addition tips or suggestions be sure to let us read them too.

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