Member profile: Meet ‘the 49-er’  

When I first speak to Jim Gault about the idea of a feature in Unfiltered, he tells me he doesn’t want it to come across as being too serious. “I’m a fun guy,” he says. It’s an intriguing start to the parts of the story I already know: he collects whisky books, there’s a story involving Society founder Pip Hills and that Jim was once known to The Vaults team as ‘the 49-er’ for his love of distillery 49. Another thing he tells me on that first call is that he has autism, specifically Asperger’s syndrome. It’s a big part of the reason he has obsessively collected whisky books over the years, and it becomes clear that the knowledge they’ve imparted is an important part of his relationship with whisky.

SPIRIT OF 49

A passion for the spirit is perhaps inevitable when you’re born and raised right next to a distillery. In Jim’s case, that was the legendary St Magdalene in Linlithgow, which was still operating in his childhood but fell victim to the cuts that swept through the whisky industry in 1983. His father had managed to get hold of some new-make spirit from St Magdalene when the distillery was still running – fuelling Jim’s lifelong love affair with The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s bottling code 49.

At the Society’s bar at The Vaults, Jim says: “I went in and the barman said: ‘You’re the 49-er. Guess what? We’ve got two bottles from distillery 49.’ A member had handed them back in, and the rule was they had to be sold for the price that the member paid for them.” The price? £40 each.

A SECRET VOW

But Jim’s relationship with whisky goes beyond these coveted bottles. He joined the Royal Engineers at the tender age of 15. Once of age, whisky became a regular part of socialising. “Teachers, Mackinlay’s, Famous Grouse – I thought it was great,” he says. “But you knocked it back in a oner, you know?”

It wasn’t until he was studying for his MBA at Edinburgh University that he came across the Society through a German student friend, Kai Jakobs. “[My wife] Deirdre and I got an invite to his house with his then partner, Martina, now his wife, and he asked if I would like a whisky,” says Jim. “He had a collection of bottles and I asked where they were from, and he said: ‘Oh most of them are from The Scotch Malt Whisky Society’. He had a Lagavulin. I tried it and fell in love with it.”

Kai offered Jim an invitation to explore the Society’s Members’ Room in Leith. “We went in for lunch, probably left about 8 or 9pm. But we weren’t drunk. You’re sitting, you’re talking. Whisky is a drink where you savour it; you’re not gulping it down. You’re just enjoying the atmosphere.”

It wasn’t long before Jim became a member himself, a gift from his wife after the end of his degree. “I’ve been a member ever since. It was sort of like a secret vow I made,” he says. “The last thing that goes, even if I’m destitute and penniless, is my membership at the Society.”

Over the years, he’s returned to The Vaults with Kai, other friends and business partners – all for the sake of introducing the good stuff to the uninitiated. One of his newest recruits is his godson, Matthew. Two years ago when he joined, Society founder Pip Hills happened to be sitting in The Vaults. “I went up and said: ‘First of all can I say thank you very much for setting the Society up. It’s one of the best things. You’re the first member. Matthew down there is the newest member – any chance you could have a word with him?” They didn’t take a photo, but it was a big moment for everyone present.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Jim doesn’t only appreciate drinking whisky – his passion extends to collecting books on every aspect of the subject. The one that started it off was Michael Jackson’s Malt Whisky Companion. “I wanted to know the whiskies and get his opinion on some of them,” he says. “It got me interested in different distilleries. When you’re at the different distilleries, you see the books, so you buy them, and you start getting to know about the distillery.”

The books became his focus, with key topics such as The Excise Act of 1823 and whisky making becoming special interests. Today his collection encompasses around 1,200 books, some with multiple editions.

Jim shows me a first edition of Aeneas MacDonald’s Whisky, followed by an abridged American edition and then an altogether different edition that includes a map on page 90. He shows me a manuscript he found in a second-hand bookshop for £4.60, titled The History of the Malt Distillers’ Association of Scotland. “I came across this dirty, thick old manuscript, opened it up, and it was a guy’s dissertation. I thought I’d read this before, so bought it, looked for the surnames, because my books are alphabetised, got to Weir, and it was his thesis turned into a book. It was brilliant!”

HOME FROM HOME

Fourteen years ago, Jim paused his whisky book collecting to focus his learning on autism. His diagnosis as an adult has changed his research focus and he is now the co-chair for LEAP, the Lived Experience Advisory Panel, working in consultation on the LDAN (Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence) Bill with the Scottish Government.

He still heads to The Vaults regularly when he can, whether it’s researching, trying the latest Society drams or just chatting to Vaults barman, Dean Marinello. “I can’t sing Dean’s praises highly enough. He’s a gem, and I’ve seen him with other members that come in. He makes you feel welcome; he makes you feel at home.”

Jim is keen that we capture more member stories from the earlier decades of the Society and bring some of our longer serving members together to share their tales. Interested? Send a message to richard.goslan@smws.com