Virtual Tastings – August 2021

We’ve had a bit of time off our virtual tastings recently – with bars reopening we want to encourage folks to (safely) get back out there. However, in August we’ve got a tasting that we could only ever do virtually – a gathering of rye whisk(e)y people from Kentucky to Melbourne.

August’s Line-up

25 August 2021, 7-8.30pm – Rye so Serious? with Billy Abbott (me, UK), Troels Knudsen (Stauning, Denmark),  John Schutt (Michter’s, USA), Dave Mitton (Lot 40, Canada), Andrew Fitzgerald (The Gospel, Australia), Paul Hletko (FEW, USA) and Christian Perez (Arbikie, Scotland): When I was asked to come up with a rye line-up for a tasting, I submitted my dream list to the events team, not expecting everyone to come back and say yes. Rye whisk(e)y has become huge over the past decade, spreading from the USA (where it has a longer history than bourbon) to the rest of the world. Despite being a relatively young spirit outside of the USA, there’s already a huge amount of variation in styles and flavour, and in this session we’ll taste our way around the world with people from the distilleries on hand to answer our questions. A tasting that I’m really looking forward to, both as host and as someone tasting along with everyone else.

The tasting will be up on Facebook live for anyone to watch, but if you want to taste along, make sure you grab a tasting pack:

Buy the tasting pack >

Coming up soon

We’ve not got any more virtual tastings in the diary at the moment, but that’s because we’ve got shows galore over the coming months.

Happening as I type, we have our inaugural Rum Show – virtual for this first year. It’s too late grab tasting packs to taste along live, but you can still pick up a ticket to watch along with the tasting sessions and catch up with any tastings you miss…or tasting packs that you pick up for later.

Next we have Whisky Show. Last year’s virtual show was so good, that we’ve decided to run both a physical and online show in parallel. The in-person show is from 1-3 October 2021, with the virtual side running through those three days and on until Friday 9 October. We’ve recently released a few more in-person tickets (we’re following government guidance on numbers of people, and we’re releasing tickets as that changes), so if you’d missed out before, you’ve got a second change to grab a ticket.

And finally for this year: Champagne Show. This year not only sees us move back to having an in person show, but also to a new venue: One Great George Street, where Whisky Show: Old & Rare 2020 took place. We liked the place so much, we’re now dragging Champagne makers there for an evening of great fizz on 29 October 2021. Tickets and full details are available from the show website.

We’ve got plans for next year, so keep an eye on the site – there’s much more to come…