The Scottish tapas dishes on offer included Grouse, toasted brioche, roasted and pureed fig paired with a 34 year old juicy oak and vanilla single grain dram; Roe deer striploin with frites, béarnaise and rowan jelly paired with a 22 year old peated dram and Partridge, butterbean and chorizo matched with a 20 year old spicy and sweet dram.

SMWS Brand Ambassador Annabel Meikle explained that the Scotch Malt Whisky Society buy limited edition casks from the top distillers and then bottle the liquor without filtering or adding water. This means that the alcohol level is normally around 56%!

It is then bottled and sold to the membership however the name of the distillery isn’t on the bottle which marked only by a secret numbering system. Instead the focus is on the flavour profile of each bottle.

The Society bottles the finest single malt whisky from around 300 single casks every year from a range of more than 129 distilleries. It was established in Edinburgh in 1983 and now has more than 26,000 members around the world with branches in 19 countries, with Members’ Rooms in Edinburgh and London. I was hugely impressed by the variety of flavour and quality of the whiskies and membership of the society would make a fantastic gift for any scotch lover.    www.smws.co.uk

The game tapas were a wonderful way of pairing the whiskies with food.  Andy Waugh, founder of The Wild Game Co., said “There’s not a better time than now to eat game, as it’s just come into season and pairing wild game with different types of whisky offers a whole new flavour experience.” Check them out at  www.wildgameco.co.uk

It was a terrific event and made me reassess how I felt about scotch and its relationship to food. With unfiltered wines, sherries and now scotches taking centre stage it seems as if we are moving into a new relationship with alcohol wanting as much as a sense of integrity and provenance from the product as we do from our food.