Whisky Impressions at Campbeltown Malts Festival

I’m excited to say that Whisky Impressions will have a stand at next week’s Springbank Open Day, on Thursday the 21st of May.  The Open Day has been on the go for a good few years now but this year it has been expanded to include the town’s other distilleries, Glen Scotia and Glengyle, and has become the Campbeltown Malts Festival. Hopefully the first of many!

I have to say this is a first for me for a couple of reasons - first time I’ve done a whisky festival in my home town and first time I’ve done a whisky festival where I don't actually have any whisky on my stand! Just t-shirts and prints. Hopefully some of you will come along and say hello, despite the lack of whisky though.

I remember one of the very first whisky festivals I went to, just after starting work at Springbank. It was in Vienna and I got talking to some of the guys from the Austrian Whisky Society who had a fantastic collection of old whiskies with them. After the show, when we were all congregating in the hotel bar (as you do), they invited me to join them for a dram of Springbank 1966 Local Barley that they had just opened. I was really touched that this group of people that I had never met before would share such an old, rare, whisky with a young lass just started in the industry. 

That’s the great thing about whisky though, and thing I love about whisky festivals - it’s all about sharing. I’ve lost count of the number of times since that moment that strangers, friends, competitors or customers have come up to me at a whisky festival, glass in hand and said, ‘taste this, it’s fantastic!’  I don’t know why it is acceptable to taste a stranger’s whisky but it just is. I mean if someone you barely knew come up and offered you a lick of their ice cream you would think they were a total weirdo but somehow with whisky it’s ok. Don’t question it too much ok, just embrace it.

I just hope this new trend for ‘investing’ in whisky doesn't stop people sharing their whisky with others; not for profit or gain but just for the simple pleasure in sharing a great dram.