I’m sitting outside the Craigellachie Hotel awaiting my ride to the airport after five days at this year’s Spirit of Speyside festival. As the judge for its coveted Best New Event award, I have spent my time at one of the industry’s calendar highlights touring the likes of The Glenlivet, Tormore, and Dunphail; been blindfolded with Duncan Taylor for a night of ‘drams in the dark’; and danced to an acoustic version of Britney Spears’ ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ on the grounds of Speyburn.
Drams were plentiful, ceilidhs were boisterous, and I came away with emails and messages on Instagram and WhatsApp from new friends made over a shared love of whisky. I even fed a Highland cow an entire packet of digestive biscuits. For the 25th year, the Speyside whisky community showed visitors from all over the world just how special this wedge of Scotland really is. More than 7,500 tickets were bought for the near-700 events that took place over the week — rumour has it, the festival hit record-breaking sales of more than £425,000.
Not only have they become part of regular parlance in whisky circles (“You going to Fèis this year?” has become an almost Pavlovian question among my peer group come May), the ‘whisky festival’ has become an ever-expanding calendar marker for anyone with a taste for usquebaugh. From the Arctic Whisky Festival in Tromso, Norway to the New Orleans Bourbon Festival, The Village whisky fair in Nuremburg, the Australian Whisky Show in Melbourne, and the Mozambique Wine and Whiskey Festival, there are more opportunities than you can shake a Glencairn at to be immersed in the world of whisky.
While established festivals are breaking records, new ones are vying for a piece of the action: Vietnam got its first whisky festival in August of 2022, Kentucky’s Bourbon and Belonging will debut this October (more on that later), and Wales’ first whisky festival will take place this November in Llandudno.
“The pandemic brought a new wave of festival promoters,” explains Davin de Kergommeaux, author and Canadian whisky expert, who has also witnessed a flurry of new blood in the Canadian whisky festival game. “Several people who developed followings on Zoom have launched commercial festivals and several whisky clubs and retailers have done the same, to the extent that there is getting to be competition among shows.”
Indeed, the scope of what a whisky festival looks like has evolved in recent years. While tastings and distillery tours are par for the course, organisers are continually looking to offer their guests — some of whom have travelled from far-flung reaches — something memorable. At Finland’s Kyröfest, art workshops like ‘build your own flower crown’, fireworks, and a rather arresting troupe of middle-aged men in tutus sets the scene for a day that is as much about conviviality as it is the Finnish distillery’s rye whisky. At Whisky Live Paris (which attracted a whopping 21,000 visitors in 2023), the headline spirit is now joined by other categories, with the likes of the Rhum Gallery, Patio des Agaves, and Sake District.
When Richard Foster quit his day job in 2020 to start members group Exploring English Whisky and the English Whisky Festival, he decided to look close to home for a physical version of the online whisky gatherings he had been doing online in lockdown — and it might not be the most obvious destination for whisky lovers.
“I’m from Croydon [in south London]. I thought it was an interesting place to hold a whisky festival in a more broad context of where festivals are going, how they’re changing and occupying new spaces. It was a blank canvas,” he explains of the beginnings of Croydon Whisky Festival.
“People thought we were mad,” he says. Who, they asked, would go to Croydon for a whisky festival? “My retort was that people don’t have to come to Croydon. There are plenty of people here. We just need to create an event for that community.”
While Croydon drew people in from the surrounding area, the English Whisky Festival in Birmingham is attracting people with a keener interest in and knowledge of whisky. However, it still retains the ability to introduce them to the unknown. “We get a more whisky-focused audience who usually already have a relationship with perhaps their local distillery,” Foster explains. “What’s interesting is… the shock when someone tries a young whisky from a new distillery, but once they understand the concept and process of English whisky it generates a real excitement.”
The general festival model is one that brings scores of brands together under one roof, but singular brands such as the aforementioned Kyrö are also harnessing festival fever and holding their own. Canadian distillery Forty Creek holds its Forty Creek Weekend in Grimbsy, Ontario each September (2023 was its 17th outing), attracting thousands of Canadian and American whisky lovers.
“There is almost a cult-like enthusiasm for Forty Creek whisky and the event itself and it definitely feels like family,” says de Kergommeaux. “Forty Creek distillery and whisky was the first to really raise the profile of Canadian whisky as connoisseur whisky, and their continuing advocacy for Canadian whisky has fuelled a lot of the enthusiasm for the whisky and for events.” It sounds like a riot: according to de Kergommeaux, there can be impromptu tastings with some very rare whiskies being poured (sometimes in the parking lot).
From one distillery hosting its own festival, the next evolution of this format is for several of them to pitch in and host one collectively. Back in Scotland, the Hebridean Whisky Trail brings together seven of the distilleries on its route over one week in September for the Hebridean Whisky Festival. The trail’s development manager Cindy Campbell sees the power in embracing a communal approach. “We do find that making it more of a festival atmosphere, trying to break free of traditional stuffy stereotypes, makes for a more festive experience,” she explains. Each year, a different distillery hosts the event — this year it will be Torabhaig on Skye — and there is a real feeling of camaraderie among the distilleries.
“I think there is more of a cooperation between all of the distilleries on the trail. They really want to promote each other. It’s been amazing to see how they have come together,” she says, specifically referencing the year that a number of the distilleries’ master distillers did a Q&A together in the whisky village. “It was really quite amazing.”
Beyond the scores of visitors and the resulting capital potential for distilleries who release special bottlings, sell merchandise, and feed the thirst of collectors and enthusiasts for their whiskies, the role of whisky festivals (a fair share of which operate as non-profits) in supporting local communities and people in need is becoming more apparent. Indeed, this year’s Spirit of Speyside festival raffle raised £6,933 for Scottish charity Mikeysline which supports people in mental health crises and is launching a new centre in Elgin — a figure tripled by Macallan on the opening evening of the festival.
Over in British Columbia, Canada, the Victoria Whisky Festival is known as one of the most community-focused festivals in the calendar. “We are a volunteer-run festival, none of us get paid for doing it and all the money we raise goes to local charities,” explains festival director Frank Hudson. Since its launch in 2015, the festival has donated hundreds of thousands of Canadian dollars to children’s charities including TLC Fund for Kids.
Islay’s Fèis Ìle launched the Islay Wave Project in 2022, publishing its plan to create and support cultural projects that support the needs of the local community, particularly its young people. Its third project focused on bringing traditional music into every primary school on Islay and Jura, with local musician Ciara MacTaggart visiting schools and even offering lessons in the aim of exciting the next generation to sustain the islands’ musical traditions.
The Hebridean Whisky Festival (now in its third year) encourages distilleries to engage with their local communities, either inviting businesses such as food partners to participate during the week or treating them to something special — Talisker, for example, laid on a concert for its locals. The festival also supports the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). “A local rep speaks to everyone about all the work they do, and each of the distilleries has a special donation can,” explains Campbell. The festival also sells pin badges to raise money, and with 2024 being the RNLI’s 200th anniversary, this year’s festival will involve the organisation as well.
Speaking of community, it is important not to overlook the care of the communities who attend these events, too. Thankfully, some festivals are becoming more proactive in making sure all of the whisky community are represented and welcome at what can sometimes feel like rather exclusive (or even exclusionary) events. De Kergommeaux is seeing such an attitude at Forty Creek Weekend. “Although women have been well represented on organising committees and in attendance from the beginning, more attention is now paid to ensuring they get a proper profile,” he explains, also noting that some of the most popular and knowledgeable brand ambassadors and presenters in the Canadian whisky space are women.
English Whisky Festival’s Foster has also stressed the importance of not stereotyping who might be interested in attending whisky festivals. In a recent LinkedIn post referencing his leafletting for Croydon Whisky Festival, he wrote: “It’s always interesting to see who takes one, who walks past then doubles back for one and who isn’t interested. Don’t judge people on their appearance or you could be losing out on a whole demographic you didn’t expect would want to attend your events. Same with posters, ask to put them up in all shops, not just the ones you ‘think’ will have ‘whisky drinkers’ going into.”
Earlier this year, LGBTQ+-run non-profit Queer Kentucky announced it will be hosting a new event, Bourbon and Belonging, dubbed ‘Kentucky’s Queer Bourbon Week’, on 2–6 October 2024. Inspired by Gay Wine Weekend in Sonoma and Queer Beer in Washington DC, the festival will see events happening in Louisville along with sponsor destinations such as Frankfort, Lexington, and Paducah. Brands including Angel’s Envy, Barrel House Distilling Co, Evan Williams, and Maker’s Mark are already involved.
President and CEO of Louisville Tourism Cleo Battle said: “As the Commonwealth’s largest city, we want to lead the way in championing Kentucky’s dedication to inclusion. Participating in events like Bourbon and Belonging reinforces that we are a welcoming and inclusive destination.”
Who comes to whisky festivals is not always an easy thing to predict, but organisers need to look to the future to keep their offering attractive to a diverse audience. Campbell, among others no doubt, is seeing the demographic of the Hebridean Whisky Festival changing. “A lot more younger people are involved. It used to be that whisky festivals were for long-term enthusiasts, but now we’re seeing more 20-somethings, 30-somethings who have more of an interest in the social side, so that’s driving the shape of the festival a little bit. We meet the needs of both audiences.”
