Debating joining the SMWS

I am a member in Canada.

Lot of fun really. There are certainly some neat casks to be had. Value for money? Not certain. But if you're someone who likes interesting and off-the-beaten path whiskies...go for it.

In Canada we're fortunate enough to have a great husband/wife team run it through my favorite whisky shop. Perfect set-up really.

Hi squidyash,I have been with smws for a while now n ordered round 12 bottles already.I must say the quality of the bottles are outstanding.all the whiskies are the very very palatable type,even tube younger lesser expressions.we have a big following in the company too and no one ever complained about any bad bottles.everytime we order we do a sneaky tasting in meetings n everytime resulted in more n more people joining.highly recommend

Hi SquidgyAsh. I looked at joining the SMWS in Australia, and even got to go to a couple of their dinners as a guest. The evenings were a great success, and were huge amounts of fun. The people were great, and the whiskies were extremely good, however in the end it was a matter of finance. All of the expressions that I thought were interesting enough that I would want to buy them were 2 - 3 times what I would have been happy to pay for them. It may have just been what was available at the time, but most of the bottles that were available at that stage were in the $250 - $400 range, and whilst good, they simply were not good enough to justify the cost. If that isnt an issue for you, or if you want to join mostly for the social aspect, then go for it.

We took advantage of a "day membership" in Edinburgh and checked them out. Loved (!!) everything we tasted. Thinking about joining quite a but ourselves, but I do feel it's a much better deal for UK residents (more events, bottle pricing, shipping,etc), especially those within reasonable distance of their 3 locations. But, still we're thinking about it - some of the drams we had there were just that unforgettable!

Thanks everyone for you feedback!! I just talked to the guy who runs the SMWS in Western Australia and it sounds really awesome! So it looks like we're not going to WhiskyLive, but are instead joining the SMWS!!!

PeatPete, I agree with you on alot of the bottle cost pricing, I doubt we'll pick up too many bottles from them, unless we've already have tasted them and like them alot due to the fact that so many of those bottles are out of our price range for just trying, but the social aspects seem really cool, sorta like a Connosr but locally!

Just as a note of interest here, I have moved to Canada recently, and after posting my comment yesterday I checked out the SMWS of Canada page, and was pleasantly suprised to find that the vast majority of the bottlings here fall in the $100 to $120 range. Makes it a lot more likely that I will join, but considering the very close exchange rates between the two countries, it does beg some questions.