Glenfiddich Explorers Competition

All kinds of cloak-and-dagger skullduggery from Glenfiddich in the last few weeks, clearly designed to engage the whisky blog community:

Part 1 – A cryptic email on 19th July from a PR flunkey, enquiring about our address and promising a ‘rather valuable’ parcel to arrive on 26th July.

Part 2 – An apologetic email on 27th July, explaining that as not all the whisky bloggers to be involved in the ‘surprise event’ had supplied their addresses on time (naughty bloggers!), the parcels were being delayed, but would be sent out on Friday 30th for arrival early this week

Part 3 – A notification email on Tuesday 3rd August explaining that the parcel was to be sent on Wednesday on a pre-noon delivery.  What a palaver!

Part 4 – The arrival this morning of a locked wooden box, with instructions to watch my inbox (presumably for the combination to the lock).

That enigmatic Glenfiddich box

Sadly, we’re very busy here and the Glenfiddich PR team had reckoned without the dodgy Lithuanian who shares my desk.  I’m sure he’s an escaped criminal.  Anyway, the lock withstood his attentions for around 6 seconds, to reveal a bottle of distillery-only cask strength Glenfiddich Solera 15 (nice) and a URL which took us to a new warehouse exploration website – and there’s a competition involved, with the prize of a £3000 holiday.  If that’s not worth a whisky blog post, I don’t know what is, so well done Glenfiddich on that one.  You have my attention.

That Glenfiddich box after a few seconds of Lithuanian interference

Here’s what to do to enter the comp:

1) Go to Glenfiddichexplorers.co.uk and register to become a Glenfiddich Explorer.  Then click to Explore the Warehouse.

2) You go through a padlock and are told to turn your sound on. Be warned that some ambient music will follow.  You can turn this off by clicking on the little graphic equalizer in the bottom right hand corner.

3) The idea is that you ‘explore’ the warehouse by clicking on arrows.  Your mission is to find a shovel, a suitcase and an oak leaf.

4) When you find each item you will be shown a video of an earnest Scottish man talking very softly about various Glenfiddich-y stuff.  Don’t forget to turn your sound back on if you want to hear him.  However, viewers prone to nausea may not wish to hear that by drinking Glenfiddich, in a sense, we’re all pioneers.

5) After you’ve found all the items you will be taken to a cask and prompted to select your holiday preferences, followed by a few standard questions on how much Glenfiddich you drink etc.  You are then entered into the competition.

I jumped through all the relevant hoops, but unfortunately the site got stuck the first time I arrived at the oak leaf, so I had to go back and start again.  Not wishing to have to plough through the whole warehouse navigation thing again, I found a few shortcuts, which I hereby pass on for the benefit of readers with a low tolerance for earnest Scottish men talking about symbolic suitcases.  Fortunately, you can speed the whole process up immensely if you so desire:

a) Once you’re in the warehouse, skip the faffing around and go directly to each item by clicking on the Map at the bottom of the screen.

b) After you’ve arrived at each item, skip the earnest young man’s videos by hovering your mouse over him as soon as he appears.

The prizes are allocated at certain pre-set times – you win if you finish the game at any of these pre-set times.  According to the terms & conditions, the prizes include:

26 x pair of whisky glasses
1 x Private Tasting with Jamie Milne
1 x Private Tasting with Brian Kinsman
1 x Trip to The Glenfiddich Distillery
18 x Tasting sets consisting of 1x20cl Glenfiddich 12 year old, 1x20cl 15 y/o, 1x20cl 18 y/o
2 x 70cl Bottle of The Glenfiddich Distillery Malt
13 x 70cl Bottle of The Glenfiddich Rich Oak
36 x The Glenfiddich Golf Umbrellas
11 x The Glenfiddich Ice Buckets

Good Luck!  Many thanks to Glenfiddich’s long-suffering PR team for my box, and hopefully they’ll forgive me for exercising my ‘pioneer spirit’ and ‘exploring’ it a bit early.

Update: Have now received a clue as to how to find out who’s got my combination.  It’s redundant now that I’ve already broken in, but that’s not their fault. I’ve also received someone else’s combination.  If any of my whisky blog colleagues has received a clue that says ‘Look for a mouthy idiot’, that’s probably me and your code is 765.