South East Whiskey Festival

The South East Whiskey Festival is an event that we book into as soon as tickets are released. While it's great to try new whiskeys, I very much look forward to catching up with old friends and spending time with distillers and presenters each year. This year was no different and those who attended from the club had a great time.

Always great to catch up with Weronika at the Bank

My first tasting of the weekend was at Clonakilty at the Bank where it was an opportunity to try some new spirits - very much a fun evening!

Some of our club members went to the Redbreast tasting with Andrew Dickie and gave some very positive reviews - some photos showing a very happy crew show how much they enjoyed that tasting!

On Saturday, I went to the Micil tasting which was hosted by Michéal and Pádraic and was very enjoyable. We tried poitín and some peated expressions including some recent releases.

Before I attended my third tasting of the weekend, a few of went to a somewhat planned event held at the back of the Sky and the Ground with Michael Cowman and his "Redacted" brand - a pretty hilarious moment!

My final tasting was Bushmills and Mark McConville didn't pull out any stops, hitting us with some exceptional whiskeys, many of which were significantly aged.

Incredible expressions - serious aged whiskeys

Mark had us in the palm of his hands

It was great to hang out with attendees and distillers after the events and many of us dropped into pubs like the Sky and the Ground, the Undertakers and Mary's Bar - a new pub for me. That pub had recently released their own whiskey and I was delighted not only to sample it, but to buy a bottle too.

As always, a wonderful weekend with my only negative feedback being that the weekend was simply too short.

We'll be keeping an eye on tickets for 2027 as soon as they're released.