Australia’s 2nd malt Whisky convention a rip roaring success.
With over 120 of the worlds best malts on show this would have to be one of the greatest malt conventions that whisky lovers can easily attend.
Friday night was the traditional “meet and greet” for all the delegates and presenters and then off to the malt shovel brewery for a quiet pre convention “Malt” of a different type.
Chuck Hahn, managing director and Brew Master entertained us a with a stunning range of James Squire beers and finger food that had to be seen to be believed. Never backward to any marketing advantage, the Australian distillers, Tasmania Distillery, Larks and Bakery Hill showed the brewers what you could really do with malt.
A quick trip back to the hotel and start preparing for the convention the next day.
The Saturday program which was not open to the public, and was divided between technical matters and lots of practical drinking.
Our distillery Bakery Hill opened the convention with the plenary” A View From the Hill” looked distilling, past, present and the future in Australaia and conclude that with a good number of new distilleries coming on line during the next year the future of distilling was indeed bright.
Ian McWilliam from Glenfarclas, Michael Urqhart from Gordon & Macphail and Mark Watt from Duncan Taylor delivered master classes in which they pesonally selected unique malts for us all to indulge and contenplate the individual companies skills and talens with brewing and distilling..
The evening, a “Gala Dinner” and was preceded by a discussion led by Franz Scheurer on the matching of whisky with food. All I can say is that thanks to Franz the dinner was a culinary triumph.
Let me leave you salivating with the menu:
Entree
Whisky Cured Gravalax with horseradish Cream.
served with Berry’s best Orkney 14 y/o 43%abv
Main Course
Veal Cutlet with potatoe Rosti, mushroom Sauce and Honey Glazed Carrots.
served with Cutty Sark 25y/o, 45.7%abv
Dessert
Steamed Chocolate Pudding, Whisky Sauce
served with Glenroths 1973, 43%abv.
All too soon the day dawned.
Sunday was an opportunity for all our distilleries to display their malts. In total over 120 different malts were available for samping.
On my calculations, that is 1 dram every 2 minutes for the entire 4 hours that the session was open.
The convention delagates where give first offering in the morning and after a hearty lunch the doors were flung pen and the public were admitted.
With such a wide range of distilleries personally being represented from around the world, with 120 malts on the table and a fantastic gala dinner, pencil us in for the convention in 2007.