Highlights online this month include:

  • Party like it’s the Roaring Twenties: This month at the Society we’re celebrating our thirst for life and ushering in a new kind of Twenties, with even more razzle dazzle than the Twenties that came before. Mads Schmoll explains how…
  • Xmas concierge: With so much variety, picking the right bottle for yourself, or as a gift, can be a challenge as we approach Christmas. Fear not, there is plenty of help at hand at the Society to help you navigate our weekly releases and find the perfect present.
  • Column David Ridley: Our Chief Member Champion rounds up a year that has been challenging for all of us in so many ways across the world. He looks ahead to a bright future as an international community of members and whisky adventurers, bound by the ambition and spirit that our founder Pip Hills set out for us all those years ago, where we can find comfort in our sense of belonging to the world’s most entertaining whisky club.
  • Return of rye with Arbikie and InchDairnie: Ian Buxton pays a return visit to two relatively new distilleries with a multitude of differences, but which are both turning to whisky’s history to shape a rye-flavoured future.
  • Pip Hills and The Star Drive: A chance encounter with an unusual machine in a street market led Pip Hills to explore the fascinating story of an engine invented by a Scottish minister more than 200 years ago that can be powered with whisky – and is now being used by NASA.
  • Unsung hero Jutta Unterguggenberger: Our European team have been on a mission to keep the whisky flowing while continuing to bring members together. This month, we’re shining a spotlight on Jutta Unterguggenberger, the country manager for Austria. Along with her husband Thomas and daughter Hannah, they’ve been going above and beyond for Austrian members.
  • Charlie MacLean MBE: Charlie is one of the whisky world’s leading writers and experts, and this year saw him honoured as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire – better known as an MBE – in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Unfiltered editor Richard Goslan caught up with Charlie at 28 Queen Street to find out about the award and his long-term connection with the SMWS.
  • Share a dram with…Helen Trotter from the Society’s Member Services team in Leith.
  • Game–changing history – Temperance: In the last issue of Unfiltered, Gavin D Smith looked at the winners and losers in the world of Scotch from the Prohibition era in the United States. While we never had a period here when alcohol was made illegal, the ‘Temperance’ movement had a huge impact – at least in certain places.
  • From the Vaults – whisky recession: Back in 2009, while the economic downturn was causing chaos in many sectors of the economy, the whisky industry was bucking the trend and even prospering. We asked a panel of experts at the time how they saw the industry faring in the years ahead. How accurate were their predictions? Find out in this feature from Unfiltered issue 2 in 2009.
  • Knowledge – How long to leave it in the bottle: Having recently examined the mysteries of ‘old bottle effect’ (OBE) and heard from its opposing camps of sceptics and believers, Tom Bruce-Gardyne delves deeper into the bottle to explore this relationship between whisky and air.
  • Partner bar – Bäckerhof, Nuremberg, Germany: Nowhere does Christmas quite like the German town of Nuremberg, with its famous festive market and the warming aromas of gingerbread and mulled wine enveloping the main square. Whether you’re visiting in December or not, the Society’s Bäckerhof partner bar is the perfect place to have a drink and a warm welcome, whatever the season.