Limited edition: Glen Scotia Festival 2018 Port Finish

Islay has one, the Speyside too and Campbeltown as well. Not as famous as the first two but getting bigger every year. We are talking about the Campbeltown Malts Festival. From 22 to 25 May 2018, thousands of visitors gathered in the former world capital of whisky on the Kintyre Peninsula for the 10th anniversary of the festival. Interest in whisky remained strong and town’s hotels, bed-and-breakfasts and backpacker hostels could barely cope with the demand for beds, and rooms were fully booked months in advance.

The festival opening started with a Glen Scotia whisky dinner at the Ardshiel Hotel, hosted by distillery manager Iain McAlister and Charles MacLean with exclusive bottlings. The second day of the festival was then traditionally reserved for Glen Scotia's open day, followed by Springbank and Glengyle (days 3 and 4, respectively), accompanied by many tastings, distillery tours, master classes and live music.

In addition to the standard range, Glen Scotia offered two festival bottlings to national and international whisky lovers: Glen Scotia 2000 Single Cask Festival Edition No 3 and Glen Scotia Campbeltown Malts Festival 2008 Ruby Port Finish Peated. The latter is now exclusively reserved in limited quantity (at first) for our club customers.

This limited special bottling is a peaty single malt from 2008 which was first matured in bourbon barrels and then finished in Ruby Port casks for another 6 months. The festival whisky is bottled at 57.8% abv, neither coloured nor chill-filtered and combines red fruitiness, berries with spicy and peaty maritime notes.