SSMWS Awards 2007

The SSMWS (Scotch Single Malt Whisky Society) awards yearly a whisky retailer and a restaurant owner for their successful efforts to promote Scotch whisky. The jury who is in charge of designating the winners is made up of representatives of the great whisky concerns (Diageo, Pernod-Ricard, LVMH, ...) and of the greatest Dutch importers (Maxxium, etc...)
The winners of the 2007 award are Aad van Zuylen in the category retailers and for the restaurants categroy, J.W.G. Warmenhoven, who is the owner of the hotel Zee en Duin in Katwijk.
The hotel Zee en Duin is kept by a whisky passionate who organizes regularly single malt tastings (once a month).
Aad van Zuylen is a retailer in a popular area in The Hague. He has specialized his shop in the independent bottlers and offers a vast choice of about 1000 bottles to his customers. He clearly choose to price his whisky as low as possible, by reducing his profit margin. His competence in whisky matters has made the reputation of his shop far beyond the frontiers of the town... Quite a close collaboration with the website
www.whisky-distilleries.info contributed to his success story. This collaboration has been mentioned by the president of the SSMWS, Ger Kleinjan during the award ceremony. The term collaboration is probably not the most appropriated one. In reality, Aad van Zuylen has such an offer in his shop that is is very easy for me to buy special and high quality whiskies, and he uses to translate my own tasting note on his website. A kind of symbiosis was born and regular exchanges of ideas and information are beneficial for both of us.
That' s why I was invited to this award ceremony. Both winning candidates really deserve this aware.
It was quite a nice ceremony in a very pleasant atmosphere.
Ad de Koning, a real monument in the world of whisky in Holland chaired the ceremony and earlier winners were present as well, like the owner of the restaurant De Koebrug in Stavoren in the extreme North of the Netherlands.

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A main ingredient in the success of a mini festival....

How to make a successful mini-festival...

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Whisky in the Church, The Hague, September 2, 2007

To make a successful mini-whisky festival (or a maxi-tasting), take the following ingredients:

• Competent and renowned whisky retailer: 1
  
• Excellent independent bottlers: 14
• Dynamic importers: 5
• Exceptional bottles: about 50
  
• Place: an old church dating back to the 13th century
• Whisky passionates: about 50
• Talented painter: 1
• Passionate volunteers : a good handful.

Those are at least the ingredients used for the whisky event organised by the forum www.whisky-distilleries.info on September 2, 2007.

The place...

This event has been organized in the oldest church of The Hague (Netherlands): the Abdijkerk in Loosduinen.
The Abdijkerk (Abbey Church) in Loosduinen (now a part of The Hague) is the oldest monument of the town.
Build between 1238 and 1250 the church was the chapel of a cloister. The style of the church is typical for the transition period between Roman and Gothic. At least as far as the oldest part of the church, near the tower. The northern part of the building is typically Gothic. This part has been built later, during the second part of the 13th century.
The church has been entirely restored during the 1960's.

The church, still in activity is a protestant temple, and we just needed the ambulatory, kind of corridor leading to the cult area, as our event was planned to be small-scaled.

The guests

This event was organized in the framework of the annual meeting of the members of the forum (this is henceforth a tradition...) and an invitation was sent to several associations of well informed whisky lovers. Amongst others, a few Malt Maniacs were invited (but unfortunately schedule problems made it impossible for them to be present. The date coincided with their preparation of the Malt Maniac Awards. The menbers of the associated forum Cask Six were invited too, but none of them could manage to be present... Amongst the other clubs, web sites or associations which were invited and present, let's mention Lindores, The Dutch Connection, Les Passionné du Malt (Toulouse, France), the Club o. Mosellan des amateurs de whisky (Metz, France), Whiskycircus (Paris, France), Whisky News (Switzerland). Beside those single malt lovers, some personalities of the whisky world were present as well, like Robin Brilleman, whisky writer ( "Schotse Malt Whisky") and delegates of the specialized press in the Netherlands: Whisky Passion et Whisky etc...

Enthousiast reviews were published on their respective websites by the whisky lovers who assisted this nice whisky event. An article has been published in Whisky Passion as well.
Of course, this event was originally intended for the members of the forum associated to the site www.whisky-distilleries.info. Most of the site editors who were present are also members of this forum. About twenty of them came to The Hague from Toulouse, Paris, Bâle, Genève, Brussels or Liège. Of course, they reviewed this event on the forum. To read their impressions, just have a look on the following pages of the forum :
Premières réactions à chaud, Les gosses à La Haye, Alors...., Compte-rendu d'après le live, et Photos.
As by now, the forum only exists in French. As soon as several people are interested by an English version of this forum, I'll set it up...

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Paintings by Jos van den Berg

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Some news from whisky-distilleries.info

It's been a long time since new messages have been published on this blog. This does of course not mean that nothing happened on the site associated with this blog... quite the reverse!
Of course the holiday period was less active (even if in my own case it has been somewhat eventful, because of my first car crash in more than 30 years. Fortunately, no serious consequences for the people in both cars...). But immediately after the holidays, we organized together with my whisky retailer an important whisky tasting in the oldest church of The Hague, Netherlands. A detailed report is to be published soon.
Beside this event, some important enhancement took place on the site.

Performances under Microsoft Internet Explorer
Since a long time, the performances of the site www.whisky-distilleries.info were very poor. Navigation under IE is now more than acceptable. The error has been located and the problems are all solved.

The forum
Another significant enhancement concerns the forum which had become a victim of completely unscrupulous spammers, just like all the popular forums... More than 20 suspicious new members a day. When I came back from my holiday, I had to suppress more than 300 of them. I decided to upgrade the forum to the newest version of PhpBB, which immediately solved the problem. For how long...? But this migration was also full of surprises and disappointments and after a few days it was finaly working correctly. This migration cost me some time, but the result is very good. An userfriendlier forum and no spammer at all since then...
By the way, the forum is the most active one about whisky in French. Should some people like to have an English forum directly linked to the site, please let me know. I is rather easy to set up a second forum.

Maps of whisky production areas
Last but not least, the site is now significantly enhanced with the new production areas maps specially developed for whisky-distilleries.info by a specialist.
Beside the general map of Scotland, Jean-Louis Bertocchio realized a special map for each of the production areas, with the localization of each individual distillery.
Putting those maps online after having added all the necessary links to the related pages on the site took me a great deal of the remaining time.
That's why this blog seemed to be abandoned during the last weeks.
Things will from now become normal again, and this blog will be regularly fed again.
I am actually so satisfied of the new maps of Scotland and the production areas on the site that I would like to add some links here, just to invite you to take a look on them.

Speyside
Northern Highlands
Central Highlands


And if you liked this maps just like I did, please have a look on all of them. There is one per area.