BUSINESS EVENTS DISTILLERIES
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and experience how their favourite blends and malts are made, to meet the people who make them, and to see which part of Scotland’s beauti- ful landscape they call home.” She adds: “Distilleries offer
something of an antidote to today’s fast-paced world, where visitors can see the slow, careful craft, rooted in a distinct sense of place, that creates Scotch Whisky. Te growth in whisky tourism is also playing a crucial role in Scotland’s rural economy, with more stays at hotels, more bookings at restau- rants, and more customers for local businesses, helping communities to grow and prosper. Te industry has invested a great deal in creating fabulous visitor facilities.” Te making of whisky is growing
and the last couple of years we’ve seen several whisky distilleries going into production. Whether or not it is the fact that they have a minimum wait of three years before the spirit they make legally becomes whisky, many open their doors to visitors. Among the recent distillery open- ings are Holyrood in Edinburgh,
Lagg on Arran, Ardnahoe on Islay, the Borders Distillery in Hawick and the Clydeside Distillery close to the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow. In addition, the spectacu- lar new £140m Macallan distillery and visitor centre opened in 2018 on Speyside. Diageo has the open- ing of the Johnnie Walker Princes Street whisky attraction in Edin- burgh on the horizon as part of its £185m investment in Scotch whisky experiences. Among Association of Scottish
Visitor Attractions (ASVA) mem- bers, distilleries that recorded double-digit visitor growth in 2018 included Cardhu, Dallas Dhu, Glen Ord, Oban and Tomatin. One of its members is the Scotch Whisky Experience (SWE) in Edinburgh’s Old Town which has been welcom- ing visitors since 1988. Its chief executive, Susan Morrison, is the new chair of the ASVA.
FRESH FROM hosting the SITE Scotland chapter’s annual meeting, Julie Trevisan Hunter, the SWE’s marketing director, explains why whisky is such a good theme for
MICE organisers. “I believe that whisky, more than a lot of other tourism products, has so many different touch points and connec- tions that you can pick up on and make bespoke according to your audience.” Julie, who is a Master of the
Quaich – an honour which recog- nises her dedication and passion for whisky – points to two recent examples. “I was doing a tutored tasting with Italian bankers who were in Edinburgh for a three-day conference. Te way the conversa- tion went with them was to the economic side of distilling and the trend of tiny distilleries setting up and how they make money when they have to wait three years before they can legally call it whisky and probably five to ten years before you have product that you can make cash on. It became a discussion about cash flow, and the role of hospitality and tourism for income.” In another case, Julie has been
preparing for a small group from a pharmaceutical company. “Tey are fantastic because they are so
interested in the organic chemis- try around whisky. I can pick out whiskies where I know there are brilliant stories of innovation or experiments which will fascinate them.” In fact, the SWE’s new Tast-
ing Tales product which combine whisky-food pairings with sto- rytelling utilises the great stories behind Scotch, telling tales of Viking warriors, medieval kings and intrepid adventurers and innovative distillers.
WHISKY EXPERIENCES come in many forms – from tutored tastings to blending your own – and distill- ery tours themselves have become more sophisticated as the years have gone by. Back in the 1950s when some Speyside distilleries first got together to create the Malt Whisky Trail, a tour was very basic. “Even back in the Eighties very
few companies opened their doors to the public and there was little in the Central Belt,” says Julie. It was in 1988 that the Scotch Whisky Experience, which is owned by the major distilling companies, opened
40 | EVENTSBASE | SPRING 2020
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