Malt Maniacs began as a 'virtual' collective around the Malt Madness
website. For a long time we interacted almost exclusively via e-mail and
the world wide web, but gradually we started to meet more often in real life.
In fact, the earliest 'maniacal' meeting was in 1998 between Craig Daniels and yours
truly in Amsterdam. All those 'live' dramming sessions were very instructive and lots
of fun, but they also added a new dimension to our 'mania'. However, because the
'international' maniacs live all around the world there simply are some limits to the
number of 'live' events we can organise. Therefore, we tried to launch some 'local'
chapters of Malt Maniacs in 2006 under the motto 'Power to the people!'. With the
exception for one German language group for Germany, Austria & Switzerland (that
never really got off the ground), 'MM in Your Mother Tongue' didn't seem to fill a need.
Louis Perlman, USA
Luc Timmermans, Belgium
Luca Chichizola, Italy
Mark Gillespie, USA
Martine Nouet, France
Michel van Meersb., Holland
Nabil Mailloux, Canada
Olivier Humbrecht, France
Peter Silver, USA
Pit Krause, Germany
Robert Karlsson, Sweden
Serge Valentin, France
Ulf Buxrud, Sweden
Bert Bruyneel, Belgium
Charles MacLean, Scotland
Craig Daniels, Australia
Dave Broom, Scotland
David Wankel, USA
D. de Kergommeaux, Canada
Ho-cheng Yao, Taiwan
Joe Barry, South Africa
Johannes v/d Heuvel, Holland
Konstantin Grigoriadis, Greece
Krishna Nukala, India
Lawrence Graham, Canada
Lex Kraaijeveld, England
Just like with the original, international site, we wanted to create open, open-minded communities of people who want
to share their knowledge of and passion for (single) malt whisky. And just like
with the first Malt Maniacs website, both
'beginners' and seasoned whisky drinkers were most heartily invited to join. With the aforementioned exception of Austria,
Germany and Switzerland there was surprisingly little need
for local 'chapters' of Malt Maniacs - possibly because the arrival of
'web 2.0' and social media like Facebook. When I write this update (March 2009) I've been
working on the reconstruction of these two web sites (Malt Madness & Malt Maniacs) for almost three years (since the summer of 2006), so I think it's safe to say that reality has now passed us by. But we don't mind too much... I can't speak for the other maniacs, but I think I'll draw the line at Twitter...
My life is so interesting that I can't possibly break it down into chunks of 140 characters or less ;-)
Anyway... now that we've dropped the idea of local chapters of Malt Maniacs, we're on the lookout for 'Foreign Correspondents' again.
Everybody that is able to express his (or her) opinion about whisky in an informative and/or
entertaining way in English (and subscribes to the principles laid out in our manifesto) is invited to sumbit an E-pistle about whisky (between 800 and 2400 words) for our E-zine. At the end of each
year the certified malt maniacs invite the most 'suitable' candidate(s) to join the exclusive brotherhood of Malt Maniacs.
And even if you're too lazy, dumb or boring to produce an intelligent and/or entertaining E-pistle for the Malt Maniacs E-zine, you can join the infamous
Malt Maniacs & Friends group on Facebook. If you join, you'll be able to participate in our 'ask an anorak' discussions yourself. We have now more than 1000 members, although not all of them are very active on the discussion board, unfortunately.
Why don't you drop by and see if you like it?
Sweet drams,
Johannes van den Heuvel
Editor Malt Madness / Malt Maniacs
