Double identity
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society is riding high again with a trendy new bolt-hole in central London . Margaret Rand takes a closer look at this revival in fortunes
Visit 19 Greville Street, in the heart of Hatton Garden â Londonâs diamond district, and youâd be forgiven for thinking you had come to the wrong place. If these are the Scotch Malt Whisky Societyâs new London rooms, where is the Victorian plush you might ask? Where are the leather armchairs? Where are the huge ceilings, and the roaring fires? And what are all these pale wood floors and contemporary pictures doing here?
In fact only the wall-to-wall malts behind the bar â and possibly the warmth of the welcome â will tell you that you havenât walked into a Conran restaurant. The SMWS may have gone contemporary for its first permanent presence in the South, but it knows exactly what itâs doing. And youâll love it.
The new London membersâ rooms opened in July. They had been promised for a long time, but for various reasons never happened; and then in 1996 a member called Robert Wilson, who already ran The Bleeding Heart Restaurant in Holborn, where the Society had for some years been holding its London tastings, took over a building round the corner. âIt had been used as diamond workshops,â says Anne Cooper, who manages the London rooms. âThe floors all went downhill, and you bumped your head on the ceilings.â
Before any of the pale wood and contemporary pictures could go in the building had to be gutted, reroofed and renovated. It was, as Cooper says, âa huge step. We had to take the Edinburgh ethos to London.â
Hats off to Cooper for not c.....
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By Margaret Rand
Section : Whisky society
Page number : 38
