The Mòr Whisky Club is a group of whisky enthusiasts who love to share their passion for Scotland’s national drink with friends! The whisky club is based in the west end of Glasgow, Scotland and Kenny Macdonald was happy to share their story through the Inside the Cask blog.
I have attended a few sessions at The Mòr Whisky Club and always had great fun with Kenny, Viktorija and the rest of the team behind the club.
Why did you decide to start a whisky club? How did the Mòr Whisky Club start?
So this started nearly eight years ago with just a few friends who drank in Òran Mòr and as things would go, we would play with a few different drams at the bar.
Most of us had either visited or been members of whisky clubs in the past but either found them stuffy or at least not as fun as they should have been so we decided to have a go at it ourselves and put together a very welcoming, fairly informal and relaxed whisky club.
How did you publicise Mòr Whisky Club (to find members)? What is the benefit for the members?
We have been very fortunate with our club where we have a bigger problem with over subscription than the other way round.
We can host about 30 people at most and on many occasions we have had to turn people away due to there being no seats, no glasses and nowhere near enough whisky for everyone.
At the very beginning there were only 8 of us and we would put a poster up on the whisky bar door to let folk know we were there but that stopped pretty quickly.
What kind of people have joined Mòr Whisky Club?
I think this is the thing that I am most happy about – the diversity of our wee club.
When we started, I was the second youngest man by four months at the age of 44 and my wife Viktorija was not only the youngest woman but at the time she was the only woman. Now (well when we get the chance to get back together) we have a wide range from people who are retired to people in their early twenties, with also a very healthy mix of man and women from a wide range of different backgrounds and nationalities.
What kind of events have you organised? Any trips to the distilleries in Scotland?
This is one side of things that we haven’t done too much on, however there have been a few trips, such as to Campbeltown, to Ben Nevis distillery and to Deanston Distillery amongst others.
There were no arrests and nearly the same amount of folk coming home as we left with so all things told not too bad.
What other projects has the whisky club worked on/ developed?
At present the first thing we need to do is to rebuild, after a full year on the sidelines but although currently we haven’t really worked on too many other projects, we were well on track at looking to bottle a limited release of our own label club whisky but that’s one for the future.
One thing I would like to mention is the twinning that we have developed and completed with The Highland Circle of Nuremberg in Germany.
This is a far bigger club than our own humble wavering with their own bar and clubhouse.
As Nuremberg and Glasgow are twined we are fortunate to be given help from both the councils involved to allow some of our club members to visit one of Europe’s biggest festivals, The Village in Nuremberg, which pre pandemic was attracting 18,000 people over three days of madness.
Over the last two years The Mòr Whisky Club have had the honour of representing Glasgow at the festival and last year gained great support from Tennents Caledonian, who donated cases of Tennents lager for us to sell to the whisky fans, as well as a very limited amount of Ben Nevis which we managed to label up for our club.
We have also been able to take 5 members out to Germany and we can’t wait for the world to start turning again so we can get back out to see all our German mates.
Looking back, what have been the highlights of your experience with the whisky club since its launch?
This is a difficult question to answer as there have been so many fantastic highlights over the years.
We have had the good and the great from the world of whisky. Brand Ambassadors with particular nights that stand out being delivered from Martin Markvardsen of Highland Park and Lukasz Dynowiak of Inverhouse Distillers, both of which gave us nights that will long be spoken about, but for me the highlight has to be the great friendships that have been built up between members of the club and who have been sorely missed this last year.
One of the biggest highlights will be our first session back after this hellish virus is over!
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