Campbeltown’s “Digital” Malts Festival 2020

As many of you will know, this week was supposed to be the Campbeltown Malts Festival until we had to postpone due to the COVID 19 pandemic. We’d have loved nothing more than to be welcoming you to our beautiful wee toon for days of dinners, tastings and, most importantly, catching up with old friends and making some new ones too but we’ll just need to save all that for 2021 instead.

We’ve had a number of messages over recent weeks asking if there will be festival bottles for sale even though the event itself isn’t happening so now seems like as good a time as any to update you on our plans in that regard.

The company is currently closed as part of the Scotland-wide lockdown to help prevent the spread of the infection and as such it would’ve been impossible to organise whisky to be ready for sales and shipping next week. Instead, we are planning a series of virtual Springbank/Kilkerran/Cadenhead’s tastings at a date to be confirmed after we’ve been able to restart our normal operations.

In addition to a special “festival” bottle or three, we will also be organising a variety of tasting packs to match with some of the masterclasses we had planned, along with online tastings, presentations and question and answer sessions.

We don’t have confirmed dates yet but it’s not likely to be before August at the very earliest as we will need time to organise whisky, packaging and, perhaps most importantly, a fair way of allocating bottles that will be in high demand without breaking our websites and your hearts!

We will of course keep you updated through the usual channels as plans progress but we hope this small announcement reassures you that we intend to be back with something approaching business as usual as soon as it is safe and practical for us to do so.

Open Day 2014

Next years Open Day will be held at Mitchell’s Glengyle Distillery. This is the year when our single malt turns 10 years old and we are planning a HUGE party that will last for days. There is talk of a Kilkerran Ceilidh, some amazing tastings, market stalls, live music, local food and ofcourse the main event – we’ll be revealing our six pack. The first six casks filled from the very first spirit run at Mitchell’s Glengyle were set aside to be bottled as 10 years olds. The six casks are of different wood types and were selected in conjunction with Willie Taylor at Broxburn Cooperage to ensure that the casks were of the finest quality prior to being filled. We’ve got a fresh Oloroso cask, fresh Fino cask, fresh Demerara cask, fresh Madeira, fresh Port cask and a fresh Bourbon cask. The Six pack set is limited to 700 of each wood type, all at 46% ABV. There will be a tasting on the day, trying all of these beauties.

Open Day 2013

This years Open Day was held at Springbank Distillery, and it was a great success! We had visitors from every corner of the world present. On the Wednesday night, 22nd May there was a very exclusive dinner held in the Kiln at Springbank. The dinner was hosted by Frank McHardy (Director of Production) and Gavin McLachlan (Distillery manager of Springbank and Mitchell’s Glengyle). Wine, champagne and very special whisky was drunk and a delicious meal with Scottish delicatessen was consumed. Everybody left the kiln with a smile on their face.

The Open day started at 11am on the 23rd of May, there was a market on the bottling hall carpark with local businesses displaying their goods, a beer tent serving Loch Fyne Ales and a special Brew called Fynebank, beer brewed using Springbank malted barley! We had live music, Alan Anderson (the Whisky Stand up comedian), tours of both distilleries and a huge BBQ.

On the Friday, for the brave, there was the annual golf competition at Machrihanish golfcourse. There were some sore heads, but the fresh air did them all the good!