Back home after a visit to Alberta and BC, taking in the Edmonton and Victoria Whisky Festivals. The former being its inaugural and was a great success with the evening public session packed with knowledgeable whisky enthusiasts.

The Victoria Whisky Festival is of course well established and provided us with a great platform to showcase our products and discuss their merits with a very appreciative audience. In addition to the public session I had a master-class in the afternoon and on the previous evening had made a “guest” appearance at the Dewar Rattray session which was featuring a Glenglassaugh independent bottle.

 The distillery has not re-started production yet which is planned for this week and we will then work through until the end of June with a small break around Easter.

With no production we have taken the opportunity to start re-decorating one of the cottages on site with a view to providing accommodation for visitors. We are planning to start whisky schools which we know have proved popular at other distilleries and with access to Graham Eunson and myself as well as the rest of the team we feel that they may prove popular here too.

Plenty of other interesting things happening at the moment and which I will be able to provide more detail in due course. Firstly we are planning to convert our old office block into a small visitor centre and to introduce more frequent tours, especially during the summer months but much of this will depend on the length of time the application takes to proceed through the planning process with the local authority.

On the subject of local authority applications we have at long last had our off-sales licence granted and can now sell all of our products over the internet as well as at the distillery to visitors. There are some changes being made to our web site over the new few weeks and so the new on-line shop is not yet available however we can now accept telephone orders.

We hope to have some announcements over the next few weeks of confirmed new markets where our products will be available and also some additional events where either Graham or myself will be attending in the next few months.

Since returning home the weather has become milder in Scotland and although still cold and small falls of snow occurring it is not at the levels seen in previous weeks. So from a wintery but sunny Portsoy, cheers for now.

As always any and all questions and comments are welcome.

In deep discussion at the Victoria master class