This American Whiskey Club Combines Rare Whiskey With Wild Bottle Designs

Why spend copious time tracking down elusive whiskey when someone else can do it for you? Enter someone else, better known as the World Whiskey Society (WWS). Newly launched in 2020, the independent bottler has forged connections with distillers and distributors from around the world so as to deliver hard-to-find expressions to their loyal customers.

We’ve sampled some of the goods for ourselves to discover distinctive flavour profiles and some truly unforgettable bottle designs. For the whiskey lover in your life, each expression makes for a perfect gift during the holidays. Of course, we’d totally understand if you’d rather score this liquid for yourself.

The concept is relatively simple. There are hard-to-find whiskeys around the world and it would take considerable legwork to track them down. As an independent bottler, the WWS does the heavy lifting on your behalf.

The business repackages the liquid inside idiosyncratic bottles and doesn’t reveal its sources, but do relay information such as the age statement, ABV, type of whiskey (rye, bourbon, etc), and general place of origin (Oklahoma, Japan, etc). Peruse the respective collections, choose the whiskey or whiskeys of your desire, and the WWS will send it straight to your door (they currently ship to select states in the USA only).

As mentioned above, we tried a number of these whiskeys and they were loaded with distinctive character. The bottle designs were similarly unmistakable, two of them taking the form of stately decanters with gothic metal stoppers. The other three, meanwhile, drew inspiration from the Old West and featured gun-like stoppers, complete with six bullets in the chamber. The gun theme may seem a bit over-the-top to some (especially if you live outside the U.S.), but it’s nothing if not unique. Here’s a quick rundown of the expressions we sampled:

• Japanese Single Malt Whisky: Crafted from 100% Australian malt and finished in Mizunara barrels, this whisky and its fruit-punchy profile was quite unlike anything we’ve ever tried.
• 12-Year Straight Rye Whiskey in Awamori Cask: With the high rye content and 12-year maturation of this rare whiskey comes a bold and dense flavour profile of cherry, cinnamon, pepper, sugar, and honey.
• Wyatt Earp Barrel Proof Single Malt: Bottled at full strength, this whiskey delivered the quintessential qualities of an American single malt, including a slightly effervescent finish of strong stout beer.
• Wyatt Earp Small Batch Single Malt: Here we have a small batch and lower ABV version of the aforementioned single malt, which follows notes of dark chocolate, malted grain, pepper, fig, and sweet vanilla with a long finish.
• Doc Holliday 7 YO Straight Bourbon Whiskey: This full-proof bourbon hails from Indiana (which can only mean that it comes from MGP) and offers the classic profile of dark sugar, caramel, and wood spice.

The expressions listed above are but a small sample of what WWS has in their proverbial arsenal. If you live in select US states and like the sound of rare whiskey being sent straight to your door, then this club was founded with you in mind. Score an expression while supplies last and don’t forget to save the bottle as a keepsake.