Scottish Field – Whisky Challenge Summer 2011, Edinburgh
As a subscriber to the Scottish Field, Jim was reading April’s edition and on page 36 was an article looking for Dads. The advert read “we are looking for dads to take part on our tasting panel for the Summer challenge”.
As you can expect it did not take Nicola long to ensure we sent off our interest in this event.
On April 8th Jim got an e-mail from Kerry Johnstone at Scottish Field inviting him to join them in Edinburgh on Thursday 5th May, Jim duly accepted.
Jim arrived early in the evening and headed down to Hawke and Hunter Restaurant in Edinburgh where we were met by Kelly Johnstone who was our hostess for the evening and we were all shown into the Johnnie Walker Whisky bar for a drinks reception including some Whisky Cocktails and canapés, a great start to the evening.
Our first tasting was the top three drams in the Under £35.00 category
After that little tasting we headed down for dinner, the food and service was of 5 star quality and the wine especially delightful. Everyone was chatting and enjoying this wonderful meal. Jim had a good chat with Richard Bath, the Editor of the Scottish Field, and found him to be a gentleman with a very good sense of humour.
Other great chats were with, Raymond Davidson from Glencairn Crystal Studio, David Urquhart from Gordon & Macphail and Julie Trevisan-Hunter from the Whisky Heritage Centre.
It was great meeting some old faces and some new ones, all night chatting and tasting Whisky, how good can you get it.
The food was superb, the Whiskies, outstanding and the company could not be bettered, it does not get any better than this for someone who really enjoys everything Whisky.
After dinner we returned to the bar to continue our tastings.
The categories left were £35.00 – £80.00 and the Over £80 Bottles
Now you will now have to buy a copy of the Scottish Field to find out the winners and the runners up, but I can say that we tasted The Naked Grouse a premium blended Scotch Whisky and was an absolutely outstanding dram.
Some of the winners and runners up included drams from – Bruichladdich, Caol Ila, Lagavulin, Benromach and Ben Nevis.
So a BIG THANKS goes out to all at Scottish Field and notably Kerry Johnstone for being a fabulous host, the night was great and only spoiled by 3/4 of us having to catch the last train home.
Looking forward to meeting you all again, don’t be strangers.
