Six Years. Geesh. You’re still here?
Well would you like at that? I guess we are! Entering the realm of the absurd, July 2019 marks the sixth anniversary of Scotchology. While we’d normally thought the best way to do an update would be annually, that turned out to require us to be on top of things more than we usually are, so every other year has sort of become the tradition. Besides, if we did a yearly update, it might just turn into a lazy sort of “more of the same, carry on” kind of thing. And who wants that? We certainly don’t. While it seems ages ago since July of 2013 when four of us started meeting monthly to explore single malt scotch together, in some ways the years have flown by. Six years later, we can’t believe where we are now. And as soon as we figure out where we are, we’ll let you know!
Year(s) in Review
The past couple of years have seen less drastic changes and even some relative stability. Our group remains at eight regular members, with the occasional visitor. The website remains constant, though the content did go through an audit in the summer and fall of 2018 to create more content consistency, along with reducing image size in an effort to minimize page load time and allocated space. The site now takes up over 50% less digital space than it did a year ago and will remain lean into the future (hopefully more than six years). We’ve continued to post about two dozen reviews annually and early 2018 saw us publish our hundredth review. Our 150th post should arrive in late 2019. This overall schedule feels sustainable, which is a prime goal. We’re looking forward to the Scotchology: Year 50 update.
As of this posting, we currently have 123 reviews, comprising 88 scotches and 35 world whiskies. Not bad for six years, right? We completed our sixth World Whisky Day tasting this past May and have continued the different series found under our Musings page like SnapShots and Whisky Wisdom. We continue to travel around the country and around the world, making and strengthening connections often started online. We’re in a groove, and it feels good.
Still Not Awards…
Our Pour Judgments post still stands as a testament to how we feel about grading whisky, along with other related things, and that hasn’t changed. We continue to have a few whiskies that earn nearly unanimous praise from all concerned, and thus believe they should be recognized as truly outstanding somewhere, hence we award Scotch of the Year to the following (the “year” frame being July to June):
Scotch of the Year – Year 5: Springbank 12 yr. Burgundy. The Burgundy cask maturation helps integrate and balance an already delightful 12 year base whisky and infuses it with unexpected complexity and depth. This is a scotch you can mull over, contemplating each small sip as you sift through all the layers, but damn if it doesn’t make you want to sit back and enjoy being alive.
Scotch of the Year – Year 6: Balvenie 15 yr. Single Barrel Sherry Cask. This year was perhaps the most difficult we’ve ever had settling on one standout scotch, with preferences spread out over several choices. Whether that is a reflection on the overall strength of our selections this year or the lack of one clear winner, the Balvenie 15 points to a recent trend of sampling more single barrel expressions, though so far we’ve only done distillery offerings rather than independent bottlers.
Special Mention – Balcones Single Malt Reserve 101. While there was more than one contender for this category, the Balcones earned the most votes from the group and it is not hard to see why. A single cask expression and a bear of a single malt, the Reserve 101 is a standout even from their regular line. It is so evocative of a place, a quality we love to see in whiskies no matter where they hail from. It is expressions like this that make the future of craft distilling a bright one.
Social Media
Social media continues to be the way we interact with others in the whisky community that are not in our immediate geographic vicinity. While it can be challenging to keep on top of everything, it remains an avenue for growth and spreading our reviews. Facebook remains pretty small at only a little over 200 Followers, it’s simply not where we’re able to most effectively engage others in the whisky world. Twitter remains the workhorse in that regard, with nearly 2,500 followers. While numbers can be a useful gauge, they do not tell the whole story. We have no numerical goal because that’s not the point. The point is the interaction and community, and that can happen with 200 people or 12,000 people. New in the past two years is the creation of an Instagram account, which has been sometimes challenging since we’ve always leaned more toward words than pictures. Apparently all the cool kids are doing it nowadays.
Plans for the Future
While the past couple of years have seen more organic growth of the existing structure rather than radical change, we been doing this long enough to know that nothing – not whisky, not people, not places, certainly not scotch blogs – stays static for very long. Location, membership, focus, features, anything might be up for grabs even if we don’t necessarily wish for it. Life’s funny that way. Yet we still have some ideas as to what might be fun in the next two years beyond growing what we’ve already planted:
- Develop new Musings series
- Independent bottling reviews
- More interviews
- Redo FAQ page
- Don’t forget the scotch
- More reviews of whisky from all over the world
More than anything, we continue to be grateful for the friendship we’ve found both in our own small group and for the whisky community at large. We hope to go on making friends and sharing drams. While we can’t predict where we’ll be exactly in two years on our whisky journey, we hope you’ll continue to come along with us on it because life, like a good scotch, is always better with good company. Slàinte!
