The Southern Alcohol & Haggis Appreciation Society

The Southern Alcohol & Haggis Appreciation Society is a group of friends in the Atlanta, Georgia, area who get together every January to celebrate Burns Night at the home and J.D. and Ann Jordan. The group began celebrating Burns Night in 2000.

J.D. Jordan had studied abroad at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, and had been exposed to Burns Supper at an event for international students. When he graduated from college and moved to Atlanta, he and his wife Ann decided to try a Burns event of their own. With a close group of friends, they threw their first Burns Supper on January 21, 2000. Most of us had never had haggis before and none of us had experience cooking Scottish fare, but the evening was a huge success and it became an annual tradition.

Our Burns Night has since grown, both by numbers of invitees and by the sophistication of the supper. But the root elements remain the same: good friends gathered around a dinner table, Robbie Burns poetry in recitation (often the bawdiest possible samples), good Scottish music, traditional Scottish food, and excellent Scotch whiskey.