Pure Festival, London

Last weekend saw the inaugural Pure Festival take place in London.  The event was organised by our good friends Jean-Luc and Pierre Thibault, who are the brains behind the hugely popular whisky social media website Whisky Connosr.  They teamed up with band promoters Brand New Music to bring a fresh, new event to the whisky calendar.  The concept was simple - to try and introduce new people to whisky and to showcase up-and-coming music acts.

The event was held at cult music venue The Relentless Garage in Highbury Corner.  It is not everyday that you get to have a whisky festival on your doorstep, so we offered to help Jean-Luc and Pierre for the two days.  It wasn't glamorous, but someone had to do it!  The whisky tasting took place in the main venue, while bands performed in the intimate upstairs venue.  Once the whisky stands were cleared away, the music switched to the main venue for the evening headliners.  It has to be said that The Garage has been tarted up a bit since we last visited, while still maintaining its cool vibe.

Ardbeg love peat and women in denim ... apparently!

The exhibitors covered a broad spectrum of the whisky world.  Big names such as Ardbeg (who win the award for most creative and interactive stand, pictured above) and Whyte & Mackay rubbed shoulders with smaller boutique producers such as the new Isle of Mull blend and The Tweeddale Blend, who were exhibiting their new second batch.  One of the most popular stands at the event proved to be that of SeventyPercent, a chocolate company that matched a different whisky to a chocolate in their range. The music also covered an equally broad spectrum.  Mercury Music Prize nominee Tom McRae and former Gene frontman Martin Rossiter were performing alongside up-and-coming and highly rated acts such as Kassidy and Smoke Fairies.

Dominic on his World Whisky stand

While working at the festival we met some great people, both whisky people and festival goers.  Amongst the whisky glitterati that supported the event were Sam Simmons (AKA Dr. Whisky and current Global Brand Ambassador for Balvenie), Gregg Glass of Compass Box, whisky journalist Dominic Roskrow and Chris & Lucas from The Edinburgh Whisky Blog.  Dominic was manning a stand (pictured, above) that had a great selection of whiskies from around the world including some rare beauties from Lark's in Australia and Amrut in India.  Likewise, Chris & Lucas were also working on a stand, bringing AnCnoc single malt to the masses.  Both were consistently two of the busiest stands at the show.

Lucas & Chris spread the AnCnoc love

There seemed to be many positives at the Pure Festival, but our main observation was that the demographic of the people attending was very different to any other whisky related show that we have been to.  Most that we spoke to were new to whisky but interested in it and Pure seemed to help break down some of the perceived barriers or snobbery that the festival goers associated with the subject.  The addition of the music to the event made it feel fresh and vibrant and clearly brought a new type of person to the show.  Many of the whisky brands also commented to us that it had made so many new potential customers aware of their products.

So congratulations to Jean-Luc and Pierre for pulling off a successful two day event.  Please be sure to check out the Connosr site over the next few days as they will be uploading a number of video clips from the weekend - this includes interviews with the bands and exhibitors, whisky reviews and exclusive acoustic tracks recorded by some of the artists. We had a great time helping out with everything and hope that the Pure Festival becomes a permanent fixture on the whisky show circuit. It offers something different and brings whisky to the attention of a new audience - that can only be a good thing.

Jean-Luc & Pierre relax with a well earned dram after Pure

Inbox > September 23, 2011

After last week's bumper holiday induced double issue, Inbox is back in to its regular Friday routine. For those of you that are new to Whisky For Everyone, Inbox is our weekly round up of whisky news and PR type material that has recently found its way in to our email inbox. It was created as we cannot write full articles or do justice to every piece that we receive. It features items from around the world of whisky and is published by us each Friday. Within Inbox we will write a few lines detailing each press release/piece of news/PR event that we have received and provide links, where possible, for you to find out further information if you want to. So, what's landed this week?

Bowmore > Launch Great Outdoors workshops & photo competition

The oldest Islay distillery has again teamed up with The National Geographic Society to launch a new photographic competition.  The International Photography Contest forms part of a long term partnership between the two organisations.

To celebrate the launch of the competition, Bowmore has teamed up with renowned landscape photographer Colin Prior and The Whisky Shop - the UK's largest specialist whisky retail chain - by announcing a series of Great Outdoors workshops.  The workshops will take place at four of the chain's stores - York (30 Sept), Birmingham (6 Oct), Edinburgh Victoria St (7 Oct) and London (11 Oct) - and in each one Colin will give tips and advice about taking landscape photographs, plus sample some of the Bowmore range of single malts with guests.  The events are free and places can be booked by contacting the stores directly - store details can be found on www.whiskyshop.com. Please note that the London event is already fully booked.  The International Photography Contest is open to all budding photographers and can be entered by clicking here.  The closing date is 31 October.

Dalmore > Sell bottle for £125,000

Richard's lost his bottle

A bottle of whisky which was released from Dalmore Master Blender Richard Paterson's private collection has been sold for a record retail price.  The Dalmore 62 was originally released in 2002 and consisted of just 12 bottles, which sold for £25,000 each.  However, Richard kept one and 10 years later presented it to Changi Airport in Singapore, where it has just sold for a staggering £125,000.  The whisky, which contains some exceedingly old single malts including one dating back to 1868, was transferred from Richard's original bottle in to a new bespoke hand blown crystal decanter for the sale.  It was presented in a hand made lacquered wooden case. As the whisky's creator, Richard Paterson commented, “The Dalmore 62 is legendary. In the space of 10 years it is has grown in value and is worth five times the original price, verifying the luxury credentials of The Dalmore, and confirming that whisky is an investment worth making.”

Glenglassaugh > Select a 'Chosen Few'

Stuart, Ronnie & Chosen Few No.1

The independently owned distillery of Glenglassaugh, located on the north east Highland coast near Portsoy, has asked its staff to select a forthcoming range of single malts.  The range named the Chosen Few will consist of 10 single cask releases, each of which have been specially selected by 10 members of Glenglassaugh staff.  They will be released periodically over the next 2-3 years and carry each persons name. The honour of the first Chosen Few release goes to Ronnie Routledge, the Customer Account Manager (pictured on the right with MD Stuart Nickerson).  He selected a sherry butt from 1976, which has yielded 654 bottles at a cask strength of 49.6% ABV and has a recommended retail price of £299.99.  It can be found in specialist whisky retailers or via the shop at www.glenglassaugh.com.

Glenglassaugh are also trying to complete the renovation of their new visitor centre facility. This is to get some tours in to coincide with the release of their first single malt under the new ownership, which took over in 2008. This release is planned for the en of 2011. At present the distillery can be toured but only on a pre-booked basis and it is hoped that that the new centre will bring much needed tourism to the localarea.

Macallan > 60 years old released

Riveting stuff

The famous Speyside distillery has announced the release of one of its rarest and oldest ever single malt whiskies.  The release sees Macallan continue their association with the iconic French crystal house Lalique, who have specially designed an extraordinary decanter for it. The design is inspired by the riveted entry hatch on Macallan's small stills.  The whisky is 60 years old and has been drawn from just five sherry oak casks, which were filled on the 9th and 10th of November 1950, and has a remarkable alcoholic strength of 53.2% ABV given its age.  There are just 400 individually numbered decanters, which are presented in a lacquered case with collector's booklet and will cost £13,000/$20,000.  Check out the video below, which shows some of the production and design processes.



Pure Festival > Whisky & music come to London

Just a quick final note to remind anyone in or around London that our good friends at the popular whisky social network Whisky Connosr, Jean-Luc and Pierre, are holding an exciting whisky and music festival over the weekend.  They have teamed up with promoters Brand New Music to create the event, which will be held at The Relentless Garage (opposite Highbury & Islington tube station).  The music will be supplied by such acts as The Raveonettes,  James Yorkston and Electric Soft Parade.  The whisky brands involved include Ardbeg, AnCnoc, Cooley, Dewar's and Whyte & Mackay, with whisky writer Dominic Roskrow holding tastings also.  Tickets are £28.50 each for each day and this includes vouchers for eight drams or cocktails and access to all of the music.  Please visit www.purefestival.com to book your tickets or you can pay on the door.

Inbox > March 11, 2011

Inbox is our weekly round up of whisky news and PR type material that has found its way in to our email inbox. Sadly, we cannot write full articles or do justice to every piece that we receive, so Inbox has been born! It features items from around the world of whisky and is published by us each Friday. Within Inbox we will write a few lines detailing each press release/piece of news/PR event that we have received and provide links, where possible, for you to find out further information if you want to. Here are this week's findings ...
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Connosr and Glengoyne event
Our friends over at Connosr, the whisky social media site, have joined forces to offer an exclusive members event with the Glengoyne distillery. The event is being held at the distillery, which lies just to the north of Glasgow, on Friday 1 April and is free for Connosr members. Included is a VIP tour of the distillery, followed by a tutored tasting of the Glengoyne single malt range plus two extra special ‘once in a lifetime’ whiskies. Connosr are taking their WhiskyPod with them, which will allow participants to review any of the whiskies, and Glengoyne are offering a discount in their distillery shop. To register for the event, go to www.connosr.com/invites/vip-glengoyne-tasting/.

Gordon & MacPhail release Glenlivet 70 years old
Last Tuesday saw the release of one of the world’s oldest ever whiskies. The event in Edinburgh had Gordon & MacPhail, the famous independent whisky bottler and merchant, launch a 70 years old whisky from the Glenlivet distillery as part of their Generations series. We were invited to the launch but sadly couldn’t make it. This Glenlivet follows on from the previous Generations release of another 70 years old whisky from the Mortlach distillery last year. The Glenlivet 70 years old is taken from a single cask, which has yielded just 100 70cl bottles and 175 20cl bottles and these will retail at £13,000 and £3,200 respectively. It has been matured in an ex-sherry cask and is bottled at the natural cask strength of 45.9% ABV. To follow the journey of this old whisky, which was distilled in February 1940, go to www.gordonandmacphail.com.

Isle of Skye sponsors Scottish Champion Hurdle
The Isle of Skye 8 years old blended whisky is to sponsor Scotland’s richest horse race over the hurdles on Saturday 16 April. The brand, which is produced and owned by Ian McLeod Distillers, is the new sponsor of the Scottish Champion Hurdle that is run at Ayr racecourse. The deal is the latest stage of the award winning Isle of Skye’s brand development, which also includes the part sponsorship of the 2011 Scottish Racing Trainers Championship and being the official whisky partner at all five of Scotland’s racecourses - Ayr, Hamilton Park, Kelso, Musselburgh and Perth.

Our Top 10 whisky websites

The number of whisky blogs and websites on the internet has risen massively over the last couple of years and each one contributes to a lively and vibrant whisky community online. The beauty of this online community is that there is enough room for everyone's voice, their style of site and their opinions. The fact that each website is written and programmed by different people, in different styles and with differing opinions is what makes the community so interesting.

Blogs can offer immediacy and short sound bites of information, whereas the benefit of a website is that it can offer more in depth information and be used more as a permanent reference resource. To this end, we started our website – www.whiskyforeveryone.com - about a year ago as an extension of our blog. This has allowed us to share much more information than is viable on a blog post, covering subjects such as whisky basics, detailed distillery profiles and interesting facts and figures. If you haven’t visited it already, then please click the link above and let us know what you think.

Here, we have decided to champion some of the best whisky websites that we have discovered since we first joined the community less than two years ago. We have made many friends and acquaintances along the way and this Top 10 is a tribute to each one's work. It would be unfair to rank these, as each offers something unique and which you may prefer is ultimately up to you, so we have listed them in alphabetical order. Recently, we produced a similar list of our favourite whisky blogs – to view this list, click here.

Ardbeg
www.ardbeg.com
Almost every whisky brand, distillery and independent bottling company have a website these days and while most are functional and ‘do the job’, there are few that truly stand out. Ardbeg is one of these and has taken the genre of the ‘distillery website’ to a different level. They combine innovative graphics, plenty of customer interaction and informative text in a stylised and impressive website. The ‘style’ of the website is carried through to their equally innovative marketing material. The site also includes a shop that allows you to buy Ardbeg whisky and other associated products. The only down side is that the site tends to crash dramatically when large numbers of people go on it at the same time to try and buy a limited edition release! Other well branded websites include Monkey Shoulder and Smokehead.

Aspiring Gentleman
www.aspiringgentleman.com
This is a cracking site that is not just about whisky, but all things for the ‘aspiring gentleman’. Whisky plays a major part on the site, with regular reviews, detailed tasting notes and relevant talking points and news. Cigars play the other major part on the site and there are excellent reviews and tasting notes of the products. However, these whisky and cigar articles are placed alongside others covering all manner of subjects such as cigarettes, tailoring, shaving, beer, other drinks and spirits, etiquette, male grooming and accessories. All articles are extremely well written and make easy reading for beginners to these subjects. We have learnt a lot, especially from the cigar reviews. There is also a store section that allows you to purchase related items, including a decent range of whisky books.

Connosr
www.connosr.com
This is a whisky social networking site that allows you to post and compare whisky reviews with other users. The site is the brainchild of Jean-Luc and Pierre Thiebaut - two whisky enthusiasts and web designers, who decided to combine their day job and hobby in order to create Connosr. There is not another site like Connosr that is purely led by its readers and contributors and it is a valuable source of information and opinion. In addition to posting your own whisky reviews, it allows you to speak with other users, rate whiskies using a star system, create your own whisky wish list, cabinet and history and much more. Connosr has been going for just over a year and is extremely popular, with over 3000 members already. Another more traditional style of forum worthy of a mention is WhiskyWhiskyWhisky.

Malt Maniacs
www.maltmaniacs.org
Where to start? Put in simple terms, Malt Maniacs is one of the most comprehensive and informative whisky websites and resources around. It is also one of the oldest whisky sites, having been started in 1997. As a result, there is a vast back catalogue of articles, tasting notes and reviews of over 10,000 whiskies! Malt Maniacs is unusual as it has contributions from a select group of ‘friends’ who are located all around the world. These include a number of the whisky glitterati, such as Charles Maclean, Dave Broom, Mark Gillespie, Ulf Buxrud and Serge Valentin (in fact, Serge’s popular blog Whisky Fun started life as an offshoot to Malt Maniacs and contains regularly updated tasting notes). The founder, Johannes van den Heuval also writes his own side project called Malt Madness, which focuses on whisky news and distillery information.

Royal Mile Whiskies
www.royalmilewhiskies.com
Royal Mile Whiskies is a retailer who have two stores – on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile (unsurprisingly!) and in London – and they have an excellent website, from which you can purchase the wide range of products that they stock. It is not for that reason that the website has been included in this Top 10, but because it is also one of the biggest resources for finding whisky tasting notes, distillery information and industry news that is available. This site has become one of our first ports of call for us when we look for any whisky related information and is where we have learnt so much. It is especially good and user friendly for the beginner, explaining things in layman’s language. Other good retailer sites that offer plenty of information are Gordon & MacPhail and La Maison du Whisky.

Scotch Whisky.net
www.scotchwhisky.net
This website markets itself as ‘the definitive online guide to whisky’ and in our view, it is not far wrong. The site contains a vast amount of information on all aspects of whisky. The distillery information profile pages are a particular highlight as they supply concise bullet pointed info and facts. These are split in to general information, distillery history, images, comments and available bottlings. The format is very easy to read and user friendly. In addition, numerous other sections are laid out in a similar way. These include information on different whiskies (single malts, blends and grain), whisky retailers and bars around the world, independent bottling companies, whisky history and manufacturing techniques and food/cocktail ideas. An excellent resource and a great site for beginners.

Single Malt TV
www.singlemalt.tv
Single Malt TV is a channel devoted to the world of whisky. The concept was formed in 2006 and it soon grabbed the interest of both whisky connoisseurs and beginners alike. The channel is internet based and operates with 24 hour programming. It was also the first channel (internet, terrestrial or satellite) to be shot exclusively in the Hi-Definition format. Single Malt TV contains everything from full length feature programmes to snippets of clips lasting less than a minute. It covers all manner of subjects to do with the world of whisky – tasting reviews, distillery visits and profiles, food and whisky matching/recipes, interviews with interesting and relevant characters from within the industry and basics guides to whisky production. Well worth a visit and before you know it, you will have been watching for hours!

Whisky Cast
www.whiskycast.com
This is one of the pioneers of the whisky podcast. Whisky Cast was started in November 2005 by journalist Mark Gillespie, when he decided to create and use the podcast as a tool for his own whisky education. The show is produced once a week and can be downloaded from the Whisky Cast site or iTunes. There are currently over 240 editions of Whisky Cast and they are all available in an extensive back catalogue. The podcasts include whisky hot topics, interviews with influential people within the industry, whisky tastings and notes, news, forthcoming events around the world and competitions. There are also archives of photographs and whisky tasting reviews/ratings, as well as a shop stocked with a selection of items including whisky books, glasses and hipflasks.

Whisky Emporium
www.whisky-emporium.com
The Whisky Emporium is an excellent website that is run by Keith Wood in Germany. The self-proclaimed ‘Bavarian exile’ has constructed one of the finest whisky resource sites around and it is packed with information. The main body of the site is the Tasting Notes section, where Keith combines distillery information with the tasting notes of any of that distillery’s whisky that he has sampled. The distillery/tasting list is extensive and you can find yourself reading through the well written notes and then wondering where your time has gone (we speak from experience!). There are other sections worth mentioning such as Dram-atics (Keith’s personal whisky blog), information on collecting and tasting whisky and a shop where you can buy 5cl samples from Keith’s collection.

Whisky Sites Directory
www.whiskysites.com
This is a simple yet effective site that offers links to numerous other whisky websites and blogs. The directory gives links to many of the whisky distillery and brand websites, with many of the Scottish, Irish, American and Japanese brands being placed alongside some lesser known producers from around the globe. There are also links to the multitude of whisky information websites and whisky blogs that are available on the web. As we say, it’s a simple site but one that is easy to use and concise, providing a valuable resource for whisky enthusiasts and beginners alike.

Please note - all logos and images are taken from the original sites.