Whisky For Everyone @ The Whisky Lounge, London

The Whisky Lounge, one of the UK's best consumer whisky shows, is swinging in to London town on the weekend of Saturday and Sunday the 18th and 19th of May.  Are you going?  If not then, you should grab a ticket if you like whisky or are getting in to the subject and live in or around the capital.  Last year, three quarters of those attending the London show had never been to a whisky show and 99% said they would go to another one.

This gave us an idea and we are delighted to now be able to bring this idea to you.  We have teamed up with the guys at The Whisky Lounge to offer guided tours of the festival.  Matt C and Karen, Whisky For Everyone's founders, will be on hand to give tours around the festival at regular intervals throughout both Saturday sessions.  These will be FREE and able to be booked at the front desk on the day when you arrive at the show - spaces will be filled on a first come, first served basis.

Inbox - March 9, 2012

Inbox is our weekly round up of whisky news and PR material that has 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 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.

Bushmills - Live music festival announced
The famous distillery from the town of Bushmills in Northern Ireland has announced a new music festival, which will be the first to ever be held in an Irish distillery.  The two day Bushmills Live festival will take place at the Old Bushmills distillery on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 June.  The line up of bands is yet to be announced.  The festival will be a 'money cannot buy' experience, as tickets will not be going on general sale.  Instead, fans will get the chance to win tickets via a competition on the Bushmills Facebook page.  Naturally, there will be plenty of Bushmills whiskey to accompany the music!

Compass Box & Albannach bar event
Unless you are a hermit or have been living in a cave, you cannot have helped but notice that yesterday (8 March) was International Women's Day. Our good friends at the Compass Box whisky company joined forces with the Albannach whisky bar for a special charity event at Albannach's Trafalgar Square venue.

The Whisky & Women Unite whisky and cocktail event was held on the evening of 8 March.  The bar staff of the Albannach had created a special cocktail for the evening using Compass Box whiskies, which were priced at £6.  In addition, £2 from each cocktail sold was donated to The Girl Effect - a charity for teenage girls in poverty. Compass Box were hosted bespoke whisky tastings of their range, while the Albannach team held a silent auction for the same charity.  Compass Box also marked the day by hosting similar events in New York, San Francisco and Beijing.

Glengoyne - Competition
The distillery and whisky brand from the southern Highlands have announce a competition for all the budding crime writers amongst us. The Glengoyne Short Story Writing Competition is open to all amateur writers aged 18 years or over.

It involves writing a short story of less than 3000 words.  The winning entry will be featured at this years Bloody Scotland festival - an international crime writing festival held in Stirling in September.  The theme is 'worth the wait', referring to the amount of time spent waiting for the Glengoyne whisky to mature.  The winners will receive a crystal decanter filled with rare 35 year old Glengoyne single malt, which is worth £2000.  The closing date for entries is 29 June 2012 and to submit you entry, please visit www.bloodyscotland.com. Further information can also be found on Glengoyne's website.

The Whisky Round Table
The latest edition of The Whisky Round Table is now out. The WRT is a group of whisky bloggers from around the world, of which we are part. Each month one of the 12 bloggers plays host and asks a whisky related question to which the others reply with their views.

This month's meeting is hosted by Chris and Lucas, who write the excellent Edinburgh Whisky Blog.  They asked for everyone's thoughts on the ever increasing number of new make spirit/white dog style releases and their impact. This month is also significant as it is the first to feature a number of the new members of the Round Table.  Some familiar names have left the group but the calibre of the new recruits is high.  To read the full question on Edinburgh Whisky Blog, and the replies of our fellow Round Tablers - click here.

The Whisky Lounge, Manchester - October 2011

The Whisky Lounge is a company that brings the world of whisky to the masses.  The company is founder by former Glenmorangie UK Brand Ambassador Eddie Ludlow and is multi faceted.  Eddie operates both corporate and consumer whisky tasting events, plus offers a consultation and training service for bars, companies and whisky brands.  Perhaps the most well known facet of the company to the wider audience are The Whisky Lounge Whisky Festivals - a series of shows that travel around the UK and that are aimed at attracting a new crowd to the genre of single malts and blended whiskies.

As Eddie puts it, "The Whisky Lounge is dedicated to the evangelism and enjoyment of whisky. Our aim is to preach the whisky word as far and wide as possible; making new friends, whilst giving people who are already converted a place to feel at home".

It was one of these shows that Eddie invited us to last weekend. The 2011 version of The Whisky Lounge's UK tour has taken in places such as Newcastle, Brighton, Liverpool and York to date, and last weekend was the turn of Manchester.  The event was held in the central location at the Lowry Hotel, which overlooks one of city's old canals.  Having only ever been to whisky shows in London, we were interested to see how the experience was going to be different, if at all.  The show was split in to two sections (11am-3pm and then 4pm-8pm) and after an early morning train journey from London, some retail therapy for Karen and some essential lunch, we headed for the show.

The line up of the festival mixed big whisky names such as Glenfiddich and Glenlivet with small, independent distilleries like Kilchoman and Arran, plus the independent bottling companies of Berry Bothers & Rudd and Gordon & MacPhail.  It also ran a series of 'master classes' throughout the day and these covered a variety of subjects, with the emphasis on the whisky beginner.

The show gave us a chance to chat with some of our best 'whisky friends' that we have met in the three years that we have been writing Whisky For Everyone - Eddie himself, Lukasz Dynowiak of the Edinburgh Whisky blog who was working on the Inver House stand, Ronnie Routledge from the Glenglassaugh distillery, Colin Dunn of Diageo, Chris Maybin of Compass Box and Michael Morris from Cooley.  We thank them all for their time, their continued support for what we are trying to do and for the drams given on the day!

However, the highlight had to be meeting up with Ian Chang, the Master Distiller at the Taiwanese distillery of Kavalan (pictured, left).  Ian has always been very supportive of us and of Whisky For Everyone since our first meeting with him about two years ago.  This includes allowing us to become the first whisky bloggers in the world to write about his products and sending us samples of his ground breaking new whiskies as they are released.

We cannot thank him enough for this and were delighted when he extended a personal invite to us to attend his Kavalan 'master class' at the show.  Within the 'master class' the group sampled four expressions of Kavalan and were taken through the production processes, casking strategy and key differences between his whisky and Scotch.  Ian's presentation, which was designed to introduce the brand to beginners, was also filled with numerous interesting facts.  Our favourite one was that Kavalan gets one million visitors a year - this is 10 times as many as the most popular Scottish distillery (Glenfiddich)!

Kavalan whiskies have won many plaudits in its short life time and is currently only available in China, Taiwan and selected south east Asian cities.  But plans are afoot to distribute the brand in the UK and selected European markets, hence this first ever appearance at a European whisky festival.  We were also delighted to meet and speak at length to Ian's assistant Joanie Tseng and Dr. Jim Swan, the consultant who has helped Kavalan with their whisky production and selection of casks.

Overall, the show was very well organised and we enjoyed our time very much.  Nearly 1,000 people came through the doors - the first 11am-3pm session seemed especially chilled out and the opportunity to speak at length with those on the stands was better than during the second session, which seemed much busier but still maintained a more relaxed feel than most London whisky shows.  Our hats go off to Eddie and his team who pulled off a successful event and must have introduced many new whisky brands to the festival goers.  Everyone we saw or spoke had enjoyed it greatly.

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

The Whisky Round Table - November 2010

The latest edition of The Whisky Round Table is now available for all to read. The subject of this month's meeting is whisky festivals and what makes one good or bad. The host this month is Mark Connolly, who writes the Glasgow Whisky (and Ale) blog, plus he also runs the Whisky Whisky Whisky forum and is co-staging his own whisky festival this month. Busy chap, huh? We are delighted to be one of the founder members of The Whisky Round Table, so hope that you will join us and our colleagues for this edition. To read the November sitting of the Whisky Round Table - click here.

The Whisky Round Table is the brainchild of Jason Johnston-Yellin, who is the author of the 'must read' whisky blog Guid Scotch Drink. His idea was to gather together 12 whisky bloggers from around the world and get them to discuss a whisky topic once a month. The hosting of The Round Table is passed around the 12 members, with each host setting the question for each month. The November edition is the sixth offering and the hosting half way point for The Round Table and the subjects have been wide and varied to date. Links to the other five articles can be found by clicking here.