Ten years. Who’d have imagined?
Scotchology, first formed in the summer of 2013, had only been around for about six months before one of us heard of World Whisky Day, a day started just two years prior that was dedicated to celebrating whiskies from all over the world. What if, we asked ourselves, we held our own World Whisky Day tasting? We were barely establishing our own groove but the challenge of diving into something else unknown together around whisky was too good a chance to pass up. Thus was born our World Whisky Day 2014 on May 17. It was a success and we had a blast on all accounts. And, so every year since then, we have held a World Whisky Day tasting. It has not always been on the official day, given that our schedules can get messy, yet we have never abandoned it outright. Indeed, 2021 and 2022 saw our first ever hybrid tastings, with gatherings both in person and virtual. We have used the tasting to explore general themes around whisky or focus in on one particular country. For a group and site devoted to scotch, this day has given us the avenue to pause for a moment and look beyond.
In the past ten years worth of tasting, we have explored over 50 whiskies from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, The United States and Wales. We have welcomed over 70 different people to our tastings, many of whom have attended multiple tastings. While the first six tastings were held in person in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro, we have gone purely virtual or hybrid since 2020 and welcomed people from all four US continental time zones, along with international visitors from Canada. These might not seem like staggering numbers but we have never aimed at high numbers as a measure of success. We’re a small scotch with limited resources, which usually means hosting happens at someone’s house and the club fronting the capital of one of each whisky offering, meaning the practical attendance cap is around 15-20 people. And honestly, we like it that way since it allows us to engage in more direct discussion with those who are there rather than us lecturing predominantly at people about the whiskies. At our tastings, we not only encourage you to give voice to your thoughts on whisky, we actually make the room for everyone to do so.
Starting in 2017, we added another facet to our World Whisky Day tastings: the proceeds went to a local Minnesota charity, People and Pets Together. This non-profit uses donations to provide pet supplies to local food banks, so that when people go to pick up food for their human family, they can find food, litter and toys for the pet members of their family too, resulting in less forced pet abonnement because of financial hardship. This aligned us with Drams 4 Fams, an initiative started in 2016 by the Edmonton Scotch Club. As of this writing, there are 21 chapters who have given tastings to over 2,000 attendees, raising over $200,000 for various food charities. Scotchology is very proud to be part of this initiative.
How will we celebrate ten years of World Whisk Day tastings? Do we go bigger and better in the hopes of reaching heretofore unreached potential? Will we go back into our library and pull out our favorites from across the years? No, because that’s not who we are. We will mark the occasion by holding a hybrid tasting on May 20, 2023. We will happily showcase five whiskies from around the world that we think each highlights different aspects of what whisky can be. These will be whiskies from</span>
Australia
Belgium
Canada
Ireland
Japan
If you are interested in joining us in person or virtually, please purchase a ticket. If you are not able to attend but would like to simply make a donation to People and Pets Together, you can also do so via the event page. Whether you are able to join us at all or not, we hope you take a chance on World Whisky Day to pour yourself a whisky you love, or one you’ve never tried before, hopefully with a friend or two. That’s how we like to do it on any day. And it’s been working pretty well for us for the past ten years. We hope you’re able to walk the way with us for another ten years. Slainte!
