The Writing Club Bar - Singapore
The Writing Club is one of the popular whisky bars in Singapore, which has more than 700 hand-picked whiskies and spirits from across the globe. And now, it is my pleasure to have an interview with the founders, Soo San Tan & Sherin Ong. In this article, I hope to share the stories of their whisky journey with you. I hope you will enjoy it.
What is the beginning of Soo San & Sherin’s whisky journey?
Early discovery
Soo San started his whisky journey earlier than Sherin. So let’s take a look at Soo San’s path first.
The story needs to trace back to 20 years ago. At that period, wine was very popular in Singapore, especially for the people who were doing business. Although wine is a very good drink, since Soo San’s body didn’t go very well with wine, he cannot enjoy wine very often. And culturally, beer is not that suitable for business conversation, so Soo San had to find alternatives. As no wine or beer, there is only hard liquor remaining as an option. And this kicked off Soo San’s journey of whisky exploration. However, 20 years back in Singapore, there were no many whisky options in the market. Ballantines, as one blended whisky brand, was the best choice for a while.
One day, Soo San found a bottle of Glenmorangie 18YO in the airport duty-free shop, and that was his first bottle of single malt whisky. With the limitation of whisky options in Singapore around 2 decades ago, Glenmorangie 18YO was the best choice for Soo San for around 3-4 years. When he passed by the duty-free shop, he would get a bottle for enjoyment.
After enjoying the Glenmorangie 18YO for a few years, Soo San & Sherin had a trip to Scotland and joined a whisky tasting session. This session allowed them to compare the whisky from different regions in Scotland, and it was the first time for them to taste the peated whisky.
Serious exploration
Soo San & Sherin’s actual serious exploration was in 2010 because there were more whisky bars or whisky shops available in Singapore. They visited the whisky places very often to gain more experience of whisky.
Similar to most whisky lovers, they start with the OBs (official bottlings). Although Soo San enjoyed peated whisky a lot, Sherin didn’t like it that much initially, such as Laphroaig 10YO. However, they didn’t stop there, and they understood that there were more options on IBs (independent bottlings) than OBs. And they started enjoying the cask strength of the peated malts. And Sherin realized that she really enjoyed those and started liking peated whisky.
With the warmed up passion, Soo San and Sherin planned a lot of trips to explore whisky. They intentionally travelled to places where it is related to whisky. And, of course, they started purchasing bottles for their collection. In the next few years, they have more than 200 bottles at home. As the whisky collection was growing, they realized that their cabinet had been filled up with whisky already within a short period of time. And this led them to another stage of their whisky journey.
Soo San & Sherin establishing The Writing Club
What is the drive for them to build a bar?
After Soo San & Sherin expanded their whisky collection for a while, they realized that they could not finish the whisky bottles by themselves. So they started an idea to build a whisky bar so that they can enjoy the whisky and share the delicious drams with more people.
Why did they call the bar, The Writing Club?
Actually, the name came from a joke of their friend. In the early years of Soo San’s whisky path, he had a group of friends from the military. This group of friends loved to gather in one of the member’s homes and enjoy whisky. Then they named this group TWC.
One night, the wife of one member realized that her husband was about to visit TWC, and she was curious about what was TWC. Then she asked her husband. The group member suddenly got an idea to explain to his wife about TWC. And he said, “TWC means The Writing Club. It is for the group to do the writing for their work assignments.
When Soo San & Sherin established the bar, they adopted the name of whisky enjoyment group - The Writing Club. As a memory of their time to enjoy drinks with a group of close friends.
How did Soo San & Sherin learn more about whisky?
In Soo San & Sherin’s experience, trying as many different types of whisky as they can to gain the experience and focus on the flavours will be a very good approach.
First-hand experience
In order to understand more about the history and favour profiles, they visited Scotland by region to see some of the representing distilleries. And gaining this first-hand experience helped them to build a very good foundation.
Try and learn from errors
They also enjoy purchasing whisky bottles to get those first-hand experience. However, sometimes the bottle they acquired may not be the profile they enjoy. So they learn from the experience. Keeping “try and learning from the errors” principle in their mind.
Online research for knowledge, but try not to get biased
As there are many whisky reviews or knowledge online, they also spent some time reading that knowledge. However, they understand that they should not be biased by the influencers.
Shall we refer to the whisky grading points, like the rating system online?
In the interview, Soo San raised a very good perspective regarding the online grading system. As most whisky lovers know, whisky enjoyment is a very subjective experience. Also, technically whisky taste involves the person’s life experience, cultural background, and even the emotional factor when he sips the dram. So the grading system is technically a very rough reference.
However, some people who join the whisky journey recently are considering those reference as a fact to define whether the bottle is good or bad. If the bottle got 90+ points, then the bottle should be great and should put more money to buy, while a bottle got lower than 85 points, then it is not a very impressive dram at all.
Soo San names this type of experience as “second-hand experience”.
Actually, to me, it is true that if we believe those rating systems as a fact and biased by the points to choose a bottle to purchase, then we are not exploring the whisky wonderland at all. We are just trying to follow a path that someone else explored. Also, the path is “biased”.
What do you think about today’s whisky market?
The whisky industry in Singapore grows very fast, especially in recent years. Many people are jumping very deep into this whisky business circle. However, most of them do enjoy whisky and want to explore more and gain more experiences. However, some of them believe that whisky is a very profitable product to sell online.
This type of online selling may affect the normal proper whisky business. Because as a whisky bar or normal whisky retail shop, they will have their overhead cost. However, for the online selling individuals, they do not need to cover any overhead cost; this will make those individual very competitive, as the price is much lower.
Then the ordinary whisky consumers in Singapore will use the lower price as the benchmark when they drink or shop whisky in a physical shop. And that will be not very realistic, and this may not be very healthy for the industry's growth.
With the above concern, Soo San & Sherin are considering getting more of their exclusive bottlings so that the customers can get more first-hand experience without much marketing influence.
What was the biggest challenge do Soo San & Sherin encounter while operating the whisky bar?
Soo San told me that getting the right customers is the most important challenge that they have for the business, in the past and for now.
Although they had many other challenges, such as finding a product, etc, however, with time and experience, they were able to manage all those challenges with time and experience and expect “getting the right customers”.
Endnote:
After the conversation with Soo San & Sherin, I realized that I also need to have more first-hand experience. And instead of buying bottles at home, drinking in whisky bars will be a very good option with trying more new things without investing a lot.
Writer - Aukingfai