Living: 2021 Whisky Events, Morgan’s version

For me, the events and tastings I’ve enjoyed the most this year are with our retailers, restaurants and bars. I attended The Whisky Lounge York festival and honestly loved every minute, but when working with our trade customers there is more variance in the events. Here are a few examples this year…

The Whisky Shop tasting, York
Filey Bay whisky has been listed in The Whisky Shop, York since July and throughout we’d discussed a ticketed tasting event there. Obviously, with restrictions in place, we had to postpone and postpone until eventually getting it together in October. This was a room of 20 people, all hugely interested in us and what we’re about. So often at ‘whisky specialist’ tasting events, guests have lots of presumptions about what Filey Bay whisky is, from “Is it salty because of being close to the sea?” to “England can’t produce whisky”… I’ve loved talking through these questions and allowing customers of Filey Bay whisky to really understand our field to bottle process, in a ticketed tasting event you have a whole two hours to do this.

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The Wee Dram Festival, Bakewell
The Wee Dram is a ‘proper’ whisky specialist. Adrian and Alison have built an incredible reputation over their time owning this shop and annually run ‘The Wee Dram Festival’. Similarly to The Whisky Lounge shows, the thing I’ve loved in whisky shows with other producers is meeting the teams of people discussing their liquids, the community in the world of whisky is really like nothing else I’ve known, so friendly and accepting of ‘new kids on the block’. I suppose there’s an element of ‘pure’ love for whisky in this perspective and that makes me feel so glad that I do what I do.

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Chocolate and Whisky Pairing, McMillans of Malton
Who doesn’t like chocolate and whisky? James and Jimmy McMillan have been retailers of Filey Bay Whisky since the very beginning and similarly to The Whisky Shop, we’d been talking about an event there since I started with Spirit of Yorkshire. My background before whisky sales was in restaurant management and food pairing was a constant interest of mine, so when James mentioned pairing up with a local (and incredible) Chocolatier and Macaron producer I was sold from the start. The best thing about this whole event in honesty was learning about the chocolate, Florian’s knowledge was incredible and some of the pairing suggestions were out of this world.

To round up, the variety of events working with our trade customers is what I enjoy most. Whisky shows are great in many ways, but as the UK Sales Manager for this brilliant single malt, if a trade customer wants to arrange a tasting/event/staff training even, that’s my real pleasure.

Written by Morgan McDermott, UK Sales Manager.

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