11yo Unknown Speyside Single Malt | 50% ABV

Score: 7/10

**Very Good Indeed.**
***TL;DR***
*Thick, sweet, biscuity, viscous, caramel, vanilla. £55. But for that membership…*

Fun. Fires. Frozen Horse Plops.

“Does everyone have a torch?” Stepping out into the frigid midnight air, we are astonished to find that we don’t need them. The moon alone is illuminating our path home.

Despite seeing many evenings like this on the Misty Isle, where the moon is shining with such intensity and clarity to create crisply defined shadows of everything - even the wires suspended between each telegraph pole scattered lowly across the landscape, it’s still extraordinary to witness it. Tonight it seems extra bright.

The houses dotted around the valley where we walk glow like cubes of shimmering marble, with little white orbs moving discreetly, carefully, around in the sea of shadowy blackness. It’s a monochrome expanse of shuddering isolation. If it wasn’t for the dazzling display of universal infinity consuming half of our perceptible sight, it would be isolating. Yet strangely, as we stomp merrily down the hill, I feel utterly grounded.

There’s a tangible link to the past. Not last week, but eons ago when navigation by moonlight alone was the only way. I feel an almost spiritual tether; our ancestors did this too. It’s probably the whisky. But also a reflection of our day spent in glorious crisp winter sunshine, heading over to Skeabost for afternoon tea (happy 40th from the Crystal Seniors) followed by a sunset-to-twilight barbecue at our neighbour’s house. It was one of the best days we’ve had in a long, long time.

Two wee girls, each alone and apart on school nights, were together tonight. Laughing and conspiring and fizzing, with energy and friendship, playing Robloks and stealing Maltesers. The adults were left to it; a rarity when kids are present. Where some might find island life lonely and distant, we have found it the opposite. Thriving and connected.

It was medicine for the soul at a time no more desperately required. Professionally things are heading for a cliff. I work in a field similar to whisky and, like the uisge beatha, it’s going through the wringer just now. Consumer spending is abruptly slowing and it’s sounding an alarm in the distance. It’s worrying and consumes my waking thoughts.

Standing under the stars with my camera pointed skywards those thoughts released their suffocating grip, if only for a moment. I can appreciate where I am; in a field behind my house, having found a second wind and scaled a barbed-wire fence with a tripod under arm, to get the right framing for a telegraph pole against the blanket of stars.

As the long-exposure timer starts I reach into my pocket for the warmed metal hip flask and leave my hand in there for a while to reanimate itself. It’s bitterly cold. Even the horse plops are solid enough to use as stepping stones. The air is so clean I can feel my lungs singing with its sharp coldness, holding each breath a little longer, cleansing.

The Crystal girls are tucked up in warm beds. I’m completely alone out here and for miles around people sleep soundly in their own warm beds. It’s pin-drop silent. Mrs Crystal reported the following morning that, as I stood in gaping awe at the universe around me turning its slow turn, the room around her was likewise spinning. She’d been coerced, when asked what would be charging her glass, to sample some of the whisky in question today. The pourer was generous and Mrs Crystal was oblivious; the island tales were in full flight, and nothing stood in their way.

Time stands still now. The hip flask is removed from my pocket and instantly starts cooling in my hand. The liquid is warm and warming. Sweet. Powerful. Delicious. The camera clicks. Another frame captured for eternity. A few checks of focus and framing, and the sensor is once again exposed to the glorious scene unfolding before it.

I think about what Mrs Crystal had pondered earlier, whether, back in the day when cameras used film and were limited to finite frames, the photographer was more present in the moment than the smartphone wielding ultra-snappers, already making their way to the misty isle for experiences lived retrospectively through a screen. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the answer is “sort of”, because the next photograph that will inspire is just around the corner and we must chase it with all our might.

Sometimes, like tonight, as the four minutes of exposure time tick away digitally, I do have a chance to look around and observe the world around me, where I stand and what we’ve achieved, moving here, answering the call of the west. It makes my heart burst into flames.

Review

SMWS Skooshy Stroopwafel, undisclosed single malt, 8 years Bourbon matured, re-racked into Tonelería Juan Pino PX butts for 3 years, 50% ABV
£55 and available, but SMWS Membership of ~£85 required to buy it.

This bottle was offered for free and without obligation to Wally, who accepted it, but had it delivered to the Misty Isle.

Earlier, in the frosty morning light, I was finishing off my porridge when the postman arrived. He was wearing what looked like a heated vest and, when I asked about it, he said it was the single most amazing thing he’s ever bought, basking in the waft of glorious heat on his neck as he walked around the treacherous icy driveways in the line of duty. I fancied one myself and was thinking about where to get one, but was distracted by the very cuboidal looking box he was handing to me.

Having spent the best part of January and February not buying any whisky, it was a surprise to see what looked like a whisky shaped parcel in the house. Mrs Crystal’s New Whisky Detector must have beeped, for she manifested in an instant. “Oh aye?”

Unsheathing the bottle from the smart cardboard protective shipper, I was reminded about the request for reviews of a new SMWS bottling in the Dramface writer’s chat. The request sat for a long while until I asked if it had been answered. “It has now”.

The SMWS bottle that arrived isn’t like a normal SMWS bottle, for there’s no code on the label. No colour coding either. Just a giant picture of a waffle and some text in the shape of squirty cream, or as we call it in Scotland, skooshy cream.

As is the way with SMWS’s naming conventions, this whisky does have a title: “Skooshy Stroopwafel”. My mind races into that dreamy world of melty, sticky finger, caramel wafer biscuit things that were massive when Aldi first opened in the UK. Placed over a mug of steaming coffee, workers the land over discovered with dismay droopy biscuits bowing into their brew and fishing them out like a handful of sand before skittering the gloopy mess down clean shirts.

I’m totally game for a caramel mess into my facehole, especially if there’s the textural element along with it - ribbons of viscous sweetness, cascading like golden rivers down… anyway, it would be brilliant if a whisky could deliver on the promise of skooshy cream alongside the biscuity, sweet caramel of a Stroopwafel.

If anyone can do it, SMWS can. Almost all the bottles I’ve bought or tried in the past from SWMS have all presented the same buttery Toffipop biscuits and jam notes. Just for the fun of it, I took the unopened bottle with me to the winter BBQ to see what my neighbour thought about it and for the thrill of new whisky opened in shared company.

As the fire inside the converted washing machine drum raged, and the cast iron skillet was placed over to take the first of the burgers, we toasted to an evening of fine dining with an Old Pulteney. It’s delicious in the cold easterly breeze flowing off the Old Man of Storr, watching the sun set over the jagged Cuillins and across the Waternish peninsula, where it morphed into a vivid red blaze. ”When it’s good, it’s good” our host nonchalantly observes as he prods the glistening black sausages, as our jaws fall open in amazement.

Soon the Skoosher appeared from the rucksack and we got stuck in. After a few Pulteneys it was markedly thicker. It’s colder than a brass monkey, so that thickness might have been exaggerated, but we both shoot eyebrows upwards when it hits the face and spend a few moments processing the gloop. It’s gorgeous.

Burgers ready, suitably roasted and plonked onto buttered rolls with haste, we tuck in quickly. The sizzling heat is whipped away with incredible efficiency by the wind and before I’m even half-way through it, the burger is stone cold. But that whisky. Oh my. Chips arrive fresh from the oven and are sticks of ice within the minute. We chomp through them triumphantly, laughing at how no-one has any feeling in their fingers, face or legs anymore.

The dusk makes way for the stars and we head inside, seeing that it’s only just past 7pm. The night is young! Within what feels like a trip and a fall, it’s five hours later and time to go home. Torches still in pockets, we plodded down the hill in our moonlit haze of unbeatable whisky fuelled storytime, spectacular flame-grilled meats and the horror flashback of cheeky little fingers dipping into the dregs of their Dad’s whisky glasses, and their regretful, beautiful little faces.

Nose

Raisin laced fudge. Strawberry ice cream. Rum & Raisin. Woodland oak, toasted. Jam on sourdough toast. Sweet sandalwood. Passing a soap shop. Biscuit wafers in the box. Chalky. Hint of salty match striker. Dusty curtains. Maple ham or bacon. Unseasoned popcorn.

Water: exaggerates the biscuity-ness of it. Bit more sweetness too. Prefer as delivered.

Palate

Syrupy. Very sweet. Liquid caramel with a bit of chili heat. Vanilla pod. Big vanilla ice cream with wafer vibes. Little tang, maybe metal. Cedar and oranges. Sawn oak. Toasted meringue pie without the lemon. Digestives, maybe even a Rich Tea. Waffles obvs. The Speyside synth sweetener is here, but tempered by all the rich caramel goodness. Slight salty kick of matches, but fleeting. A cherry or raspberry or something red.

Water: sweetness is amped up bigly. Heat is damped. Prefer as delivered.

The Dregs

In wintry social settings this whisky is viscous caramel laced joy. It’s all gloop and sweetness and spice, warming, enrobing liquid that accompanies proceedings perfectly. A dessert dram if ever there was one, and especially wonderful after those salty meaty cheesy flavours recede. In the cold light of isolated analysis this remains a viscous caramel laced whisky that is really, really good.

It’s an 11 year old undisclosed Speyside whisky, spending 8 years in bourbon hogsheads before being transferred to four Tonelería Juan Pino PX butts. After 32 months it was all vatted together to form a small-batch single malt release of 2,382 bottles. SMWS have placed this in their “Heresy” series; a bracket that celebrates their unconventional and innovative whiskies. This is now Batch 30 of the Heresy range, started in 2017 and I like the idea, especially from a place like SMWS who have entrenched themselves in the mystery whisky club scene. It’s still a mystery whisky, but doesn’t have the air of dry stats and colour bands. It feels more fun!

For someone like me who has no means to frequent the bricks-n-mortar SMWS hideouts, there’s not much reason for me to get involved in the club. I can get all the single cask excitement I could ever need from places that don’t require a membership fee; but to not recognise that SMWS, and more specifically Pip Hills, started this whole single-cask exploration system, would be unfair. He gifted us modern whisky as we exciters know and love it, and for that I’m grateful.

I will never pay to join a club for access to whisky that hides behind the veil of mystery. Yes the SMWS labels have been superbly accurate in their descriptive labelling enough that I’d have some confidence buying sight unseen, but without that tasting facility at the SMWS clubhouses, I just don’t want to run the gauntlet for the high entry price. The bottlings I’ve bought through auction have been more miss than hit, and it’s an expensive way to discover new whisky from a remote location.

That said, this is the first bottle from SMWS that I have wanted to replace before the halfway mark. It has more than enough interest going on around the main show to keep things engaging. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big sweetie mountain, blowing all the caramel trumpets you can find, but there’s also little nuanced flourishes from the other players - soap shops and dusty curtains, metal vanilla pods and woody oranges. It’s a big, thick yumyum.

£55 is the label price for this 50% ABV, naturally presented single malt, which seems entirely reasonable given what’s available for this price and this quality. Looking around the whiskyverse for other opinions before I hit “submit” on this review, I see that the Two Whisky Bros, in their hugely extensive SMWS turnout review, found this to be a bit thin on the palate, but I disagree. They also call it a blended malt, which it isn’t. Other limited opinions on Whiskybase find this whisky similar to mine - big, sweetly vanilla caramel, toffee moreish whisky.

I’ve really enjoyed this, both in company and alone. I reckon this has been the most I’ve enjoyed an SMWS bottling so far, including that big hitting 25yo Caperdonich and the Ardnamurchan “Walking in the Woods”, that didn’t taste like any Ardnamurchan I’d tried then, or since. Biscuity drams.

This one doesn’t have the heat of the Deep Impact Dram, or the blueberries of the Caperdonich, but what it lacks in both those areas it more than makes up for in reach. As in, I’m reaching for it again and again. It feels, for the first time in my SMWS experience, more aligned to the spirit of whisky enjoyment in 2025 - fun, affordable and unpretentious.

£55 is a solid price for a solid whisky, and I would be pushing “buy” on another right now, if it wasn’t for that £85 membership fee.

Almost had me SMWS. Almost.

Score: 7/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. DC

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