Southport Whisky Festival - Winter 2024

This year's @SouthportWhisky Festival was held in a great new venue, it was great to meet up with old friends and make some new ones!

Here's my thoughts!

Southport is a large seaside town just north of Liverpool.

I travelled down on the Friday afternoon - it was a beautiful day!

That evening, as usual on a Festival Friday Night, I met up with some friends for a curry and a few beers!

Saturday morning arrived wet and windy, a good breakfast was had to line the stomach for the day ahead!

Victor Porter @onekv and his team organise a twice yearly festival, this year's was held in the Grand on Lord Street in the centre of the town - a great location.

This year there were reps from over 25 distilleries and independent bottlers, the hard work started with emptying the stock from cars and vans into the venue.

The day started with an Art and Whisky session, tasting whisky and painting led by Stephen Pedley.

Photo: JWBassman

This was followed by a Masterclass of SWC exclusives by the legend that is @Ibon_Mendiguren

We tried:

• Scottish Blended Grain BGXX Man With The Hat [MSWD]
• Henstone 2018 3yo Single Cask #14
• Dailuaine 2012 10yo Single Cask [BNSp]
• Caol Ila 2011 9yo Single Cask #18235 [HL]
• Loch Lomond 2017 4yo Single Cask #730 (Peated Single Grain)
• Spey S27 Man With The Hat [MSWD]

Then it was on to the festival!

Some of the friends I met!

Top 5 drams for me were:

The spreadsheet suggests I tried 25 different drams of which 19 were ones I'd not tried before!

Here's to the Summer festival!