#57 Fife Whisky Festival and Independent Spirits Festival

A tale of two festivals

TL;DR: March has become the month of festivals for us. First, the Fife Whisky Festival, marking our fourth time as volunteers. A couple of weeks later, the first edition of the Independent Spirits Festival. Both of similar size, and both geared towards whisky geeks – two great opportunities to chat with whisky connoisseurs and enthusiasts and have some tasty drams.

As we got deeper into 2025, the festivals’ season started. Last year it had kicked off very early, in January, thanks to Funky Booze, a very fun and lively festival in Edinburgh that this year was on a hiatus. Nonetheless, this year we didn’t have to wait much longer, as on the 1^st of March, taking advantage of a pause in the Six Nations, we were headed to Cupar for the Fife Whisky Festival. This was the fourth time we attended as volunteers, but for the first time we skipped the opening dinner on the Friday, at Lindores Abbey distillery. Feedback from our pals was very good though, and it made us almost regret not going: among the drams that were served, there was a Gianluigi’s favourite, Laphroaig, and a 25y cask sample, wow!

Ready? Ready!

Anyway, we arrived in Cupar on Saturday morning, after picking up our pal Francesco, a Leither like us. After checking in with the festival’s directors, Justine and Karen, we helped the exhibitors set up their stands in the upper and lower halls, and then went out to check tickets and distribute wristbands in advance, so that the attendees wouldn’t lose precious dramming time. Both sessions went well, we met a lot of friendly faces (as in previous years) and had the chance to sip some very tasty drams. This year, against all odds, we managed to use our sampling bottles and take them home for quiet sipping. We did the same with the leftover bottles (kindly donated by the exhibitors) – by taking just samples, we could try way more drams at home, much better than having a half bottle of something, which we really don’t need.

Busy dramming session in Cupar.

Different to the previous year, the following day there was no distillery trip, but a choice between two warehouse tastings by Fife-based independent bottlers: Lady of the Glen, in Dalgety Bay, and The Single Cask, in Glenrothes. Folks could go to both events if they wanted, as Justine and karen organised a bus to transport people between the two locations. We only did the Lady of the Glen tasting though, with no regrets – we had great time and tried some excellent drams with Paul and Gregor. It was a pity we couldn’t visit a distillery this year (after all, that’s our hobby!), but we love warehouse experiences too.

Keeping warm with Lady of the Glen drams.

A couple of weeks later it was time for another festival, a brand new one: the Independent Spirits Festival! It was organised by David Stirk, and conveniently for us, it was held at the Leith Theatre, at crawling distance from our flat. Having been heavily advertised on Roy Aqvavitae Youtube channel, there were many barflies (the channel followers and supporters) from all over Europe and beyond (we think we heard someone coming from New Zealand, impressive!).

Round two of the March festivals.

The event was split into two: first, at noon, there was the screening of Independent Spirits. This is a 4-part documentary series about independent whisky bottlers and their role in the industry. It is directed by Greg Swartz and Guy Satchwell, and produced by the same crew behind the great Water of Life documentary. The series is made of short bits of interviews, that together tell the story of how independent bottlers came to be, what’s their role in the whisky industry, currently and in the future. During the screening, we could enjoy a couple of drams, a sherried Tormore, offered by the Elixir Distillers folks, and a peated dram from Glasgow Distillery, matured in an oloroso cask. Both very delicious.

Hanging out with whisky enthusiasts…

Once the screening and Q&A session ended, we had about one hour to grab some food. We picked one of our favourite spots in the neighbourhood: Peter’s Food Hub, a multi-cuisine take out. The festival session started at 4pm, although people who had attended the screening could get in a whole 15 minutes before others (but no drams served). Now, as the name suggests, of course the festival was focused on independent bottlers, and there were many, many, many of them. Basically, most of the ones you can think of (with one exception, one of the oldest, owning a distillery near Pitlochry…iykyk). For whisky nerds like us, it was like being a kid in a candy shop – the range of drams was impressive, from a young blended scotch called Peatsmoke on Gorgie, by the Campbeltown-based Watt Whisky, to a 25y Bowmore from Tri Carragh. And so many others: Woodrow’s, Fragrant Drops (with a new line of small batches whisky called Elevenses), obviously the SMWS, Cadenheads, Elixir Distillers, Thompson Brothers, the small but great Whisky Concerto, Lady of the Glen…you name it! It was a great session, not too crowded and we had a lot of fun. We didn’t know at the time, but we know now, that there is going to be a second one in 2026, hurray!

…more whisky enthusiasts…

…and more!

Overall we loved both of those festivals, we feel that are the perfect size for us: not too big, not too overwhelming, but with all of the whisky we want to sip. But mostly, with the right people: in the crowd, behind the stands and among the staff. Getting to chat with friends and other whisky enthusiasts like us, exchanging drams’ suggestions and having a laugh is really what makes these occasions special. What to say more? Just that we are looking forward to next year editions!

Until next time, slainte!

Links

Fife Whisky Festival: https://www.fifewhiskyfestival.com/

Independent Spirits Festival: https://www.independentspirits.co.uk/

#41.1 Fife Whisky Festival 2024

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.

Not a bad place to enjoy a drink before dinner.

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!

Getting ready…

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”.

Nah, it wasn’t just hard work 🙂

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 30^th anniversary celebratory collection: stunning.

We didn’t know there was a place for us!

A great lineup.

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/

#29 Fife again

Back to the festival, with a visit to Inchdairnie

TL;DR: And the time for one of our favourite appointments came again: The Fife Whisky Festival, where we and a bunch of Edinburgh Whisky Group folks volunteered again to help Justine and Karen. As part of the festival, we visited the very modern Inchdairnie Distillery, usually closed to visitors.

One of our favourite events of the “whisky-year” is a relatively small festival, expertly organised by the entrepreneurial duo of Justine (Kask Whisky) and Karen (Angel’s Share Glass): the Fife Whisky Festival. It starts on a Friday in early March (carefully chosen to avoid clashes with the 6 Nations) with an opening dinner, followed by two sessions on the Saturday at the Corn Exchange in Cupar, and it ends on the Sunday with a few events at local distilleries or other venues. Simple and effective, and this year edition was no different.

Like in 2022, this year the opening dinner was at the Lindores Abbey distillery, in Newburgh. We were welcomed at the bar with a cocktail based on their Aqua Vitae, which we enjoyed in the adjacent production room (not working during the evening). Dinner was served downstairs, in the “huge table hallway”.

Happily waiting for dinner and drams.

As last year, we had four drams, an opening one and three paired with the delicious courses. This year we started with a Lindores Abbey (Friar John Cor cask strength), and then we had a Nc’Nean (The Huntress 2022 edition), a Loch Lomond and finally another Lindores Abbey (the leftover of their inaugural release, reserved to the members of the 1494 Club). Before the event, Justine kindly asked the distillery staff if we could sleep in our campervan in the parking lot, which they agreed (thanks again!). We are not sure that everyone was up to speed though, as in the morning we spotted some puzzled faces among the workers…oops. As we woke up, we quickly dressed and drove towards Cupar to grab some breakfast. For the second night we had booked a B&B, and fortunately we could check in early.

That’s the closest we slept to a distillery.

The festival went very smoothly. We were on tickets duties at first, and during the second session we also checked in Roy Duff (from the Aqvavitae Youtube channel) and other whisky-pals from Glasgow, among others. During each session, after most of the attendants got in, we helped the standers by bringing coffee, tea, etc. Gianluigi even replaced temporarily Declan from Glenallachie to let him have a break, as he was alone at the stand. For a minute it was nice to “play brand ambassador” for one of our favourite brands! There were many volunteers, so work was not excessive, and it was nice to take a break from time to time to get a wee dram and chat about whisky with old and new friends. After cleaning and wrapping up everything, the night ended at a local restaurant with a good curry.

Find the real brand ambassador…

On Sunday, after a sizeable Scottish breakfast at the B&B, we picked up our friend Stephen and drove to one of the events of the day: the visit to Inchdairnie distillery (the other was a Lady of the Glen tasting at Dalgety Bay). We were very excited about that, for a number of reasons. First, it was a rare occasion to visit a distillery usually closed to public. Second, we knew they were producing some very interesting spirits that we tried at the virtual Fife Festival whisky tasting in 2021 (the only year when the actual festival didn’t go ahead), including some rye, which we both quite liked.

The distillery is in an industrial estate near Glenrothes. The parking lot is in front of two modern buildings, one for production and the other one for he offices (with warehouses behind the latter), and the entire (very tidy) area is surrounded by a green lawn. After a little wait, we were welcomed inside the offices, in the conference room. As we sat around the table, Ian Palmer (the managing director) introduced himself and started describing the distillery vision and production, soon delving into technical details (so much that we both started taking notes on our phones).

Yes, Teresa’s hair went wild…

Production started in 2016, with a capacity of 2 million litres per annum, soon to be doubled. Because of this big capacity, they experiment with different mashes of malted barley, rye and oat. Thus, they have lot of different products in their portfolio and, unlike most new distilleries, they are keeping some to release themselves and selling the rest to blenders (including Macduff International, whose portfolio includes Grand Macnish, Islay Mist, Lauders and Waterproof whiskies…many of theese bottles were on display). Current plans will see their single malt (Inchdairnie, unpeated) released in 2029, and will be the result of Fife malted barley, from both spring and winter crops. Depending on the season it is distilled, the newmake will be put in different casks (here a scheme of the pairing between season and cask type).

At the moment, they are also producing an unpeated single malt, Strathenry, as their trading whisky (a few independent bottled ones already came out). There are also two peated malts: Kinglassie and Finglassie. The former is produced using Fife barley, while the latter is sold as a trading malt (to blenders and independent bottlers). A range of unique distillations, varied every year, will be released under the name of Prinlaws, and they will be experimental runs. Finally, the first product they released is the Ryelaw: a mash of malted rye (53%) and malted barley (47%), with second distillation in a Lomond still (the third we saw, after the Ugly Betty used to produce the Botanist gin at Bruichladdich, and Scapa’s wash still). Because there isn’t a definition for rye whisky in Scotland, it is classified as a single grain whisky. However, it satisfies all the criteria for American rye whiskey, except not being produced in USA, of course. It is currently available for the not wallet-friendly price of £110.

A passionate Scott with a passionate audience.

After the thorough introduction by Ian, Scott Sneddon (the distillery manager) took us around the production plant. We first saw the boiler, currently running on natural gas, which will be replaced with a hydrogen fuelled one. Being so new, they don’t have neither a Bobby nor a Portheus mill, and the milling is done with slightly different percentages compared to the most common 70% grist, 20% husks, and 10% flour mix. This is to maximise the sugar production in the mash, which is obtained through a mash-filter, as opposed to the majority of distilleries that have a mashtun. Fermentation happens in stainless steel washbacks outside the production building. Other than the three stills (wash, spirit, and Lomond) used for production, they also have a wee pilot still, which they used to decide the various parameters for their spirit. Of course, everything in the distillery is highly automatic, as testified by the equipment in the control room. Outside, we saw silos utilised as spirit receivers, and a row of palletized warehouses, with barrels patiently waiting to be ready for bottling. They have also a small warehouse in a separate building for their cask club.

Back inside, we had a very nice buffet lunch and a nosing experience of some of their spirits (including some oat newmake spirit, veeery different). To our surprise, no tasting on site, which was actually better for us as we didn’t have to pick a designated driver. Instead, they gave us a very generous tasting pack with four drams: 2018 Inchdairnie Palo Cortado, 2017 peated Kinglassie (probably ex-bourbon cask), Ryelaw newmake spirit and Ryelaw (distilled 2017). A very nice touch, and as we later found out, the drams are all delicious.

A tasting pack makes you happy 🙂

Overall, one of the most peculiar distilleries we visited so far. While most of the new distilleries went down the road of a traditional building and process, others like the Cairn definitely embraced modernity. Inchdairnie, however, seems to push this to another level, and only with time we will see if their efforts will be rewarded. For now, everything looks very promising.

Until next time, slainte!

Fife Whisky Festival
https://www.fifewhiskyfestival.com/

Inchdairnie Distillery (not generally open to visitors)
https://www.inchdairniedistillery.com/