Frequently Asked Questions

Your monthly membership fee entitles you to the following:

Invite to Monthly “Meet-the-Makers” Private Event

Full Access to The Stillhouse – with new monthly videos, interviews, educational features  and articles

Full Access to Quarterly Tasting Events with Irish Whiskey Makers & Brand Owners*

Opportunity to purchase each Exclusive Club Bottling (multiple per year)*

Opportunity to participate in each Group Cask Program (multiple per year)*

Access to in-person meetups (when held)

10% Discount on all Stories & Sips merchandise

Distillery Discounts & Exclusive Club Offers (Coming soon)

 

*  You have the option (but are not obligated) to purchase exclusive Club Bottlings, shares in Club Cask Programs or Whiskey Tasting Packs for our Quarterly Tasting Events. These will incur a separate and fully transparent charge. 

 

The following items are not included in your membership fee and are an optional extra purchase should you decide to buy:

• Exclusive Club Whiskey Bottlings
• Shares in our Club Cask Programs
• Whiskey Tasting Packs for our Quarterly Tasting Events (see separate FAQ for more info on this one)

Building a club takes time and money. There are web development and hosting costs, software service costs, we pay ALL our writers and contributors (no freebies expected here!) and we will be devoting a significant amount of time to producing great video content and bringing you the best events, experiences and whiskeys. If we didn't charge a modest membership fee we wouldn't be able to offer any of this. I know it can feel like there are more and more things to pay for each month but the good news is that we have 100s of hours of free content that you can access without being a member anytime - podcasts, Lock-in livestreams and more. We will also continue to be very active in growing our Irish Whiskey Fans of America Facebook Group which will always be free. And we'll have at least one Lock-in a month so you can get your fix of music, craic and whiskey. 

Each Quarterly Tasting Event will have an allocated number of Tasting Packs (3 x 50ml bottles of Irish whiskey). This number will vary depending on the whiskey and distillery but we will endeavor to have as many packs available as are requested. 

These packs will be brought you at cost price meaning they are not marked up or priced for profit. The costs will depend on the variable freight and shipping costs from Ireland, packaging costs and the delivery charges within the United States. Currently FedEx charges $20 minimum for legally compliant shipment of even a single miniature bottle of whiskey within the United States. It is our hope that we can bring you a Tasting Pack for not much more than the shipping and packaging cost ($20-$30). 

This cost can be reduced significantly if the Tasting Pack can be picked up in person. We will ship from California and will permit the picking up of packages from our location in Folsom, CA. In the future we may be able to have additional pick-up locations.

No, not at all. Perhaps you already have these bottles on hand or you'd like to sit in and learn without the whiskeys. As a member you can join all Tasting Events, with or without the whiskeys. 

Fortunately we can ship to most states.  As state laws evolve that number will change.  Currently we are not able to ship spirits to Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Utah. This list is subject to change at any time and we will share as soon as a state updates their requirements. 

You can reside in one of the above states and still participate in all our online and in-person events. 

We'd love to have you as a member of the Club, no matter where you live. What you should bear in mind, however, is that your country (or state) of residence may determine what we can and can't ship to you. For the moment, we will be unable to ship our Quarterly Tasting Packs outside of the U.S. It might seem odd that we can't ship them to Ireland, where the whiskeys were distilled, but it's all a matter of time-sensitive shipping, logistics and local alcohol regulations. 

We are working to make a small number of our exclusive Club Bottlings available for shipping within Europe via IrishMalts and will keep you posted on this as we get closer to opening up the opportunity to purchase.

You may purchase a share of a Club Cask from anywhere in the world but you will most likely need a U.S. address for us to send your bottle to once the cask has matured. If we find an alternative solution prior to the opening of our Club Cask program, we'll be sure to share that here and via email. 

We'll do our best to help get you your item within our legal capabilities. Failing that we will give you a full refund on any item purchased that cannot be delivered to you. 

We won't know the exact price until we finalize shipping and freight costs, angels share, etc for each release. We expect most bottlings to be under $100 though we may also have much lower and much higher options for those who wish to participate. Most important to us is that we bring you unique, extraordinary whiskeys as cost-effectively as possible. 

In an effort to bring down the cost of Cask Program participation, the Club will purchase entire whiskey casks from distilleries and divide up the cask into a number of shares. The number of shares will vary depending on the size of the cask. Each share will be redeemable (post-maturation) for one bottle of the mature cask. In some cases the price paid for a share will include all charges and fees up to the point of handing you your bottle(s). In other cases, there may be separate shipping/bottling charges. This will ALWAYS be made extremely clear PRIOR to the sale of Cask shares. We will be fully transparent and share all available information at all times. 

1 share of one Cask Program might cost you $40 while another might cost you $80. Again, we'll make all this clear prior to the opening of each Cask Program.  

We know that not everything is a fit for everyone so if you join and you decide it's not for you, simply shoot us an email and we'll cancel your membership and return the monthly fee you paid. We'd never expect you to pay for something you weren't happy with. 

We launched our first Stories & Sips whiskey, The Story, in 2020 in collaboration with Louise McGuane, founder of J.J. Corry. This was released in the middle of the pandemic as a community project to lift spirits and connect us all across the miles at a time when we needed as bit of community and togetherness. Everyone who was part of the project contributed their time, materials and resources to this project at cost or at a loss. No profits were sought, made or expected. It was a wonderful project that we all enjoyed that would have been a commercial failure at the price point we brought it to market at if everyone involved was paid what they deserved. 

As you will appreciate and understand, we would be unable to operate a Club at a loss, no matter how much we love this community and Irish whsikey!

We will produce at least one high quality video a month (Distillery visit/Guide to Whiskey Bars etc) together with multiple articles and features that will all live in the members-only area of the Stories & Sips website known as The Stillhouse. 

It certainly will not be going away! We expect it will only get busier and more fun as more and more members take to the group to chat about tastings, videos, content etc. We will invest as much time in the Facebook community as we have ever done. And maybe even more!

Great, we love questions. Send them to us on our contact page and we'll get you a speedy answer. If it's a good enough question we might even add it to our list of FAQs here! Imagine the the thrill...