Festival delights whisky lovers from across the globe
The Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival has been hailed a huge success as it welcomed fans from 37 different countries to the party.
The gathering continues to grow as a global phenomenon with visitors taking part in the five-day celebration of Scotland’s national drink.
Whisky lovers from key markets including Europe and North America came in large numbers, but were joined by others from nations including Venezuela, Korea and Japan.
Data about the festival, which came to a close earlier this week, will be analysed over the coming weeks but organisers are confident that it will be one of the best attended on record.
It follows a record-breaking start to ticket sales in February, when 85 events were sold out in the first 24 hours and £99,000 worth of tickets were sold in just 60 minutes.
The whisky festival, which has been taking place over the May Day bank holiday weekend for the past 18 years, comprised almost 500 events right across Speyside – recognised as the spiritual home of Scotch whisky due to the high concentration of distilleries.
There were also more events than ever held in the strath including tastings, dinners and tours.
A host of events were staged over the festival duration at The Glenlivet including tasting experiences by Blanch and Shock thoughout Sunday.
Hors d'oeuvres featuring hay smoked trout were served up with The Glenlivet 18 year old and coffee, cocoa butter and black truffle cake being twinned with The Glenlivet Nadurra Oloroso.
Elsewhere locally, there were art of distilling tours at the Speyside Distillery by Kingussie; manager’s tours of Tormore Distillery and a whisky dinner and Glenfiddich tastings at the Muchrack Country House Hotel by Dulnain Bridge.
Festival chairman James Campbell said: "It has been an incredibly busy five days on Speyside and the feedback we have received from visitors has been phenomenal.
"Newcomers have told us they cannot believe the scale and variety of the festival while repeat visitors have said they have been spoiled for choice in terms of the quality of events on the programme.
"We will spend the next few weeks looking at all the data and information to see where we go for next year."
Read more on this year's festival in business in the latest Strathy now on sale.
