A blended Scotch malt whisky featuring five regions in one bottle – Campbeltown, Speyside, Islay, the Lowlands and the Highlands – has been released to coincide with whisky festival season in May.
May is an important month for whisky with Islay Festival, Spirit of Speyside and Campbeltown Malts Festival taking place across Scotland, as well as World Whisky Day on 16 May.
“The Five Regions” is an 11-year-old blended malt from The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, combining malts from all five of Scotland’s whisky-producing regions.
The £74 bottling is a re-casking of the Society’s 2025 “Wandering Alchemy” release, meaning one portion of the original whisky was used for the release, while another portion was put back into some of the original casks and left to marry and relax for one more year.
Matured in bourbon, oloroso, Pedro Ximénez and HTMC (specially charred oak) hogsheads, the whisky has notes of fudge doughnuts, glacé cherries and caramelised apple slices alongside wood varnish, teak oil, nutmeg and star anise.
The Society is also releasing 16 other single cask bottlings from across Scotland’s five regions to celebrate whisky season, including “Post-bonfire bath bomb” (£199) and “Eau d’archive” (£72).
Founded in Edinburgh in 1983, the SMWS has always championed flavour over tradition, not revealing distillery names on bottles and instead creating evocative names like “Red wine and brine in the old coal mine” and “Lavender honey and chimney lobsters” to guide whisky exploration through taste and aroma. The Vaults in Leith, Edinburgh, remains the spiritual home of the Society.
Whisky Quality Manager Julien Willems said: “May is an important month for whisky, and we wanted to honour the season by showcasing the incredible breadth of whisky produced across Scotland.
“This bottling is all about bringing the five regions together to create something unique. Anyone who bought a bottle of last year’s “Wandering Alchemy” will have the chance to compare the two expressions, which together reveal the huge difference re-casking can make!”
London based whisky fans can sample some of these bottlings at an event on 12 May at the SMWS’s London venue, 19 Greville Street, where whiskies from five regions – Campbeltown, Speyside, Islay, Lowlands and Highlands – will be tasted and compared, asking the question, “what comes first, flavour or region?”
Members who purchase a festival bottle as well as new members from May 2026 will also now be entered into a prize draw to win a cask from Distillery 10. One entry will be made into the draw for each SMWS 2026 festivals release bottle purchased or each membership activated. A winner will be selected at random and announced on 5 June 2026. For more information visit: https://smws.io/cask-comp
For more information visit: https://smws.com/
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“The Five Regions of Scotland”, Tuesday, 12th May, 6:30pm, 19 Greville Street
Tickets available here.
