Whisky Stramash

So Saturday was a beautiful sunny day and I spent for of it chilling out in Princes St. Gardens, and got some nice photos but I had tickets to the Whisky Stramash at Surgeons hall at 17:00.

The Whisky Stramash is an annual 2 day event (well this was it's second year). A lot of distilleries and Whisky bottlers had small stands and promote their whiskies, you wander around each stall and get small free samples of their wares, how many you sample is up to you and how busy each stand is, I didn't manage to get around all the stands, but certainly got round enough to be somewhat inebriated by the end of the evening! :-) Probably not helped by a wee glass of 30 year Harviestoun Ola Dubh beer (Harviestoun had a wee temporary bar set up in the Surgeons Hall courtyard).

As well as sampling many fine whiskies, there were a couple events going on, one of those is a virtual tour of the Glenfiddich distillery. I must admit I have never visited a distillery so I found it quite interesting, as well as slideshow photos of different parts of the distillery and guides who explained the different parts of the process (as well as handing out samples) there was a Cooper who showed us how they maintain the Whisky barrels. They use a variety of barrels including old sherry or bourbon barrels as well as new barrels. These barrels are used many times for ageing process of the whisky and are maintained by hand (the barrels are routinely checked and occasionally the staves need to be replaced). This is the job of the Cooper (pictured), the barrels are held together purely by the metal bands which are hammered in place by hand.

One day I'll get around to going to a real working distillery and seeing the whole Whisky making process in person.