The Niche Whisky Fringe Festival at Edinburgh

Edinburgh Whisky Fringe is in its sixteenth year now. Over time it has gained the reputation of being one of the most remarkable attractions in the list of global whisky events. The tickets for the three day festival are limited to four hundred and fifty each day. This allows only a significantly small number of lucky people, to experience the beauty and grandeur of Mansfield Traquair, and sample two hundred and fifty whiskies spread over twenty eight stands.

The exhibitors almost always know what people want and bring to the table some exceptional ‘half-time orange’ treat drams. A speciality of the festival, the list features rare whisky like Dalmore Quintessence, Springbank 21-year-old, Ardbeg Dark Cove, and Linkwood 1998 Cote Rotie from Gordon & MacPhail. This practise of making select whisky available for all, sets apart the Ediburgh Whiskey Fringe from other whisky festivals that happen across the globe.

Scotland’s smallest distillery, Strathearn distillery from Perthshire, was conceived one Fringe festival day and six years later, now they are back as exhibitors. Strathearn matures its spirit, both peated and non-peated, in small octave-sized casks, so that each batch of their whisky is unique. The first bottle from this micro-distillery was sold at £4,150 through a whisky auction platform.

Royal Mile Whiskies' annual Whisky Fringe manages to draw people from all over the world to Edinburgh’s historic Old Town. An essential part of their success is the spirit of the people who come to attend it, and the passion they share for all things whisky.

Country Roads, Take Me Down the Bourbon Trail

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough,” Mark Twain once noted.

King's County Distillery: New York’s Oldest

They say old is gold. Old distilleries hold an irresistible charm for any whisky lover. And, a search for the oldest operating whisky distillery in New York will lead you to the King’s County Distillery. Standing in a corner on the Brooklyn Navy Yard, this 117-year old distillery was America’s first to open after the Prohibition Era. Beginning the journey in a tiny room in East Williamsburg, the distillery shifted to the waterfront Paymaster Building, a stone’s throw away from the landmark where the Brooklyn Whisky War of 1860s was fabled to have taken place. The King’s County Distillery strikes a note of symphony between the traditional, and the modern. The distillery uses copper stills imported from Scotland with hand-built wooden fermenters sourced locally in their distillation process. It remains one of the oldest, and the most prominent craft distilleries of New York, well known for producing corn whiskey, and bourbon.

Unearthing George Washington's Distillery

Who could have imagined that the Father of the Nation of the United States would set his mind on whisky making after retiring from his presidency in 1797? Yet, that is exactly what George Washington did. Shortly after stepping down from his stately duties, he was looking forward to the peacefulness of a sedentary pastoral life which had so far eluded him. Mount Vernon was his sanctuary of choice, and when plantation owner James Anderson met George Washington, he proposed they utilize the watermills, and state-of-art gristmill of Vernon for whisky production.