Another Fife bites the dust
TL; DR: We volunteered again for the Fife Whisky Festival, what a great event! We started with a nice dinner at Lindores Abbey, followed by a day of work and fun at the festival, and finally a masterclass! We’ll definitely try to go back once again next year!
Whisky festivals are interesting experiences: a joyful buzzing bunch of people moving between stands, like bees between flowers to “sip” on the golden nectar offered. At least, this is what we experienced so far at the Fife Whisky Festival (FWF), Whisky Fringe, and Funky Booze, the very few festivals we attended so far. As people who started their whisky journey visiting distilleries, mostly in the middle of nowhere, we particularly appreciate these festivals’ chilled out atmosphere: busy but manageable. As a matter of fact, it’s the third year in a row we attended and volunteered at the FWF (it’s becoming a friends’ reunion!), and we’ve always had great time. The small but not-too-small size, the selection of exhibitors that tends to attract whisky nerds more than people who just want to drink, and overall the great organisation by the two festival directors Justine and Karen make this event special to us.
As usual, the festival started on the Friday evening with the opening dinner at Lindores Abbey distillery, over 70 people seated around a huge table in the cloister, after a welcome highball or dram (MCDXCIV single malt, 46%abv) at the distillery bar. The dinner was a 3-course meal paired with four drams. We started with a Lindores Abbey, a nice single cask expression, from a Ruby port seasoned cask, paired with melted camembert cheese. Afterwards, a Lochlea Our Barley (their core range expression, ok but a bit boring in our opinion) and a tasty beef main with roasted vegetables. This year, the guest speaker was Nicholas Morgan, who talked about his career and his connection with Fife (mostly due to working for Diageo at Cameronbridge distillery). Having read a couple of his books, it was quite interesting. The meal continued with a very good Spey single malt (probably our favourite of the dinner drams), a Spirit of Speyside bottling from 2022 and creme brulee. Finally, another Lindores, an interesting cask sample from a French wine cask that we couldn’t quite understand (the room is big and, at that point, people were chatty). During the evening a couple of drams made their way to our glass, first the new Blended Malt by Woodrow’s of Edinburgh, a small but great independent bottler based in Leith: a perfect session dram. The other one was a very yummy Clynelish Rare Malts from 1974, bottled at cask strength at 23 years of age: as these bottlings are disappearing, probably one of the few times we’ll be able to try one.
Probably those drams were one or two too many, as the morning after we woke up with a slight headache. We quickly dressed up and headed towards the Cupar Tearoom, where we had a delicious breakfast, including a 3-pancake stack with bacon. That bacon-heavy breakfast was enough to made us feel better, so by the time we got to the Corn Exchange we were perfectly fine again and ready for the festival. As usual, we helped exhibitors unload their cars and vans, showing them where their stand would be, and performend various small tasks required before the festival started. We also met up with this year official photographer, Dougie from Dramface: check out his IG page – unlike ours, his whisky shots are great!
For both sessions, our main task was to check tickets and put wristbands on. When the first wave of people was in, we moved on to serve coffee and tea to the exhibitors, and helped them with anything else they needed (and also, enjoy a couple of drams). In the second session we were a bit more relaxed (and maybe slower because of the irresistible fudge donuts we’d had in the break), and for about an hour we got lost in the “Bermuda triangle” formed by Woodrow’s, Fragrant Drops (another small but great Leith-based independent bottler) and Daftmill. Gianluigi even talked a bit with Francis Cuthbert, Daftmill’s owner, about his cows…professional interests. As the second session ended, we helped tidy up the rooms. It was a long day, but it was a lot of fun too, in particular catching up with many people we hadn’t seen in a while: people are what really makes whisky special. The day ended with a nice (and very abundant) meal with the other volunteers at the Greenhouse, kindly offered by Karen and Justine as a “thank you”.
We woke up well rested on Sunday. After packing up the van, we got a coffee at Justine’s B&B, before going back to the Corn Exchange to help set things up for the three masterclasses: Adelphi, Kingsbarn, and Woodrow. To our surprise, we and other volunteers were invited to join the first one, so nice of Karen and Justine! The presenter was Antonia Bruce from Adelphi/Ardnamurchan – a great tasting host who brought delicious drams. We started with the (now) classic Ardnamurchan AD (46.8%), and moved on to a single cask bottled for Lockett Bros wine shop in North Berwick (unpeated ex-Oloroso Spanish Oak hogshead, 58.6%). The following drams were from the Adelphi range, a 16y Breath of the Isles (“undisclosed” Orkney, vintage 2007, 57.4%), and two sherried drams, a 18y Bunnahabhain (58.2%) and a 12y Inchgower (57.4%). The tasting ended with an extra dram, a 40y Miltonduff (refill ex-bourbon hogshead, 50.4%) from their 30th anniversary celebratory collection: stunning.
Because Teresa was driving right after the tasting, and Gianluigi later in the day, we couldn’t drink (Gianluigi only sipped a couple of them), and for once we had run out of sample bottles (lesson learnt: sample bottles are never too many). Fortunately, our pal John came to the rescue and gave us some of his empties: thanks! We left soon after the tasting for a 30ish minute drive north-west to attend an event we were really looking forward to: the visit to Aberargie distillery!
Stay tuned to hear more about this, and until then, slainte!
Fife Whisky Festival
Link: https://www.fifewhiskyfestival.com/
Dramming around 