The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS) has unveiled The Blender’s Notebook, a limited-edition 18-year-old blended Scotch whisky. The release marks a first for the whisky club, which has been known for its single cask single malts since 1983.
The expression is Batch 44 in the Society’s Heresy range. Launched in 2017, the small-batch label gives the SMWS Whisky Team license to experiment with blends, cask combinations and spirits from outside Scotland. The range won Gold with all three of its entries at The Spirits Business’s Scotch Whisky Masters 2026.
At the heart of the blend is a single sherry butt holding the base of a long-discontinued blended Scotch, which has been maturing at batch strength for around 20 years.
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READ THE STORYThe Society’s Whisky Team combined this with 27-year-old grain whisky and malts of around 18 years old, matured in bourbon casks, American oak PX casks and Spanish oak oloroso barrels and hogsheads. The bottled blend is around 70% malt, with a 60/40 split in favor of sherry casks.
The concept came from the Society’s outgoing Whisky Director, Kai Ivalo, before his retirement.
“If you’re going to create a Society blended Scotch, you’d better go big, or go home,” he said. “It should be a high malt content blend with an old-school character and pedigree.”
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That brief extends to the packaging. The bottle’s label is styled on blended Scotch labels of decades past, right down to the thistles and the period wording in the small print.
According to official notes from the brand, the Society’s Tasting Panel found linseed oil, apricot jam tarts and greengage plums on the nose, with honeyed melon, Madeira cake and candied pecans on the palate. With water, vanilla fudge and old-style sherry wood come through, before a drying finish.
Julien Willems, whisky quality and sensory panel manager at the SMWS, described the project as a departure from the norm.
“Heresy has always been the Whisky Team’s playground, the space where we can have some fun and wander down the paths not taken, and it doesn’t get much more out there than the Society releasing a blended Scotch,” he said.
“Coming up with the label for something so unique certainly was barrels of fun, but as flavours go, there’s nothing light-hearted about what’s in the bottle,” Willems added. “That well-aged sherry butt and PX influence bring real depth and character, the added bourbon casks and American oak add a silky lift for the malt core, all neatly tied together with grain nearly three decades old working as the mortar that keeps it all together.”
He continued: “But ultimately, it’s the quality of the whiskies and the way their flavours intertwine that makes this blend so special, more than the sum of its parts, and that’s what the Society has always been about.”
Heresy Batch 44 is priced at $100 (£80). The one-off batch of just 1,092 bottles is on sale now at smws.com to members of the Society, which anyone can join.
