A toast to members old and new!

It was a great experience being the other side of the table at the York Whisky Festival from The Whisky Lounge on Saturday 7th October. Having run two ‘micro-festivals’ (Christmas 22, Summer 23) and attended many a whisky festival, we were keen to see what serving drams at a larger festival would be like. We splashed the plastic on some branded stands and table cloths, then went on a dram-sourcing mission. Given the opportunity to chat to potential new members, we wanted to make sure that we had a representative enough range of interesting and old favourites to give attendees an idea of our York Whisky Club ethos.

We were asked to pour for another exhibitor who had a last minute emergency so our dramlist doubled in the 24hrs before the event and many an attendee commented that they could have spent the entire session with us!

Some highlights and thanks before the full dram list:

🙏 to Hemil from The Lakes Distillery
We had The One series from our Summer Micro-festival and No.6 but he made sure we got their latest releases, the end-of-series No.7 and Equinox which allowed us to do a series comparison taste test!

🙏 to Woody from Woodrow’s of Edinburgh
In our festival prep, we were delighted when four cask-strength indie bottlings of their calibre arrived. All mightily accomplished drams, the Caol Ila 10yrs 1st Fill Palo Cortado Sherry Hogshead (57.6%) got particular attention and the word soon got out.

🙏 to Simon from Simply Whisky
From our summer festival, we knew that the 15yr Tequila from Deanston would be an intriguing dram and the up-and-coming Indri Trini would attract interest, but the 3yr old ex-pomegranate wine from Milk & Honey bottled by Simply Whisky had to be rationed!

🙏 to Amanda and Eddie from The Whisky Lounge
With a few years’ attendance under our belts, it was a great experience to be the other side of the table and be given the opportunity to chat to existing members and meet people intrigued about getting involved.