Delayed By Three Months, How Was Glasgow’s 12th Festival?

Crowds still seem strange to me these days. As my taxi pulled into the main car park at Scotland’s National Stadium, I had to admit to myself, internally, I was weirdly nervous.

Delayed from November 2021, and their first since 2019, the doors for Glasgow’s Whisky Festival at Hampden had just been opened. Social anxiety isn’t something I would generally be too concerned with. Strange times. I felt rusty. Perhaps everyone was? Perhaps the event would be?

Slamming the taxi door and raising my sights to find the end of the queue told me a couple of things; that I needed binoculars to find the end of the insanely long queue and that Glasgow was ready for this.

A quick, panicked phone call to hook up for a ticket exchange with folks already queuing betrayed a curious demeanour; where you’d normally expect frustration at a queue of this length; there were giddy laughs. Perhaps we all felt relieved to be in a group, we might all be rusty at this - not whisky discovery or a festival - but crowds. And yet, no rust here. We were also ready for this.

The only potential fly in our whisky-infused ointment was storm Eunice, it proved a challenge for many who’d travelled far. Yet by Saturday morning, Glasgow asked Eunice to take her leave and blessed patient whisky fans with crisp air and rays of winter sunshine that soon had many choosing to carry their jackets.

The queue was handled with ease by friendly, welcoming officials ushering politely and efficiently. No temperature checks, no Covid ‘passports’, no special screening, just some pre-game sensible advice communicated by the GWF team in advance to have a negative LFT within 24 hours of Hampden’s 12pm kick-off. Everyone was masked up for the corridors and connecting areas and, as if aware of clearing bottlenecks here from the get-go, even the cloakroom queue to check-in those removed jackets could be measured in seconds. No rust here either. Good start.

Some back story for those who have yet to attend. Glasgow’s Whisky Festival is grass roots. Moving from the city-centre Arches (which it quickly outgrew) to the hospitality halls of the stadium happened some years back now, but the format remains more or less the same. Being a little further out requires some planning but even if you have to opt for a taxi from the city centre it’s not expensive. The cover charge for your ticket is £40 - the same as the last festival held in 2019 - and it allows free pours at any table. There are no tokens or currency to consider; only your own cadence and pacing. There are two sessions of four hours each, 12pm until 4pm and the evening session is 5pm until 9pm. You can choose to attend either the afternoon or evening sessions, not both. With a thousand tickets for each, I imagine it’s quite a shift if you’re working the entire show.

As you enter the hall your first impressions will be dependent on what festivals you’ve attended in the past. Rather than bespoke, expensive booths and back-lit branded galleries, GWF is all tablecloth and pop-up banner stands. This gives an informal vibe and the ability to connect with producers over a table, rather than from behind a high bar-top. This is common for festivals in the UK, but not all follow this setup. It pitches the tone nicely; branding is there, but the people and smiles stand in front of the temporary artwork and bottles on the table take the focus. This is the first thing to give you a clue that this format is much more curated for those who want to connect with the whisky. It’s not a place to talk about mission statements, USPs and brand values, and you won't spend much time marvelling at packaging and tactile labelling. The whisky is poured for you. Just try it; ask anything. The second thing that betrays this focus is much more profound. But I’ll get to that later.

As you flick open your free programme it lets you see the list of exhibitors. Many have a pre-planned route to get the most out of their four hours; either their ‘favourites’ or perhaps things that are new. This is a great strategy, but it’s not mine. I simply meander. Certainly it seemed that was this year’s ‘unplanned plan’. My head was up, scanning the hall ahead. All I could think was “So many people!” but it was quickly followed by “So many whiskies!”. Whisky is a good rust-remover, right?

The last GWF was long enough ago now for there to be a marked change in the exhibitors and the choices available. I think for the better, despite the point I’d like to make closer to the end of this piece. There were simply so many new names and also, perhaps more markedly, names that were new last time have since become honey-pots. Think Ardnamurchan, Glenallachie, James Eadie, North Star Spirits and many more with a buzz around them. Where previously they had the hard-sell of explaining what they were all about, this time the feeling was one of just enjoying their presence and being embraced so enthusiastically by an invested crowd.

My strategy was not particularly efficient or productive. So many happy, familiar faces that I’ve not seen in so long and so many pent-up things to talk about! After more than two hours I was still only half way through the first hall. While there, I met a familiar, glowing face attending his first ever GWF. We talked about relief and joy and quickly exchanged our picks so far; “The Kilkerran 8yo’s - there are two this year!” and the best pours getting the chatter from the ridiculously huge Scotch Malt Whisky Society selection (without a hint of exaggeration, you could spend both sessions just in this one spot). When I asked him what he’d discovered in the opposite, mirror-image hall he stared at me with a wide-eyed look of something that lay between glee and intimidation, as if I was a sonographer who’d just told him he was expecting twins. “There’s another hall?!”

We needed this. You could feel the release in every smile, every handshake and every pour…

This festival has built upon its core group of attendees that have been going since it’s foundation in 2010, where the closer-to-city centre Arches was big enough to accommodate the exhibitors at that time. Almost as if it were another means to measure the growth in whisky in these intervening years, it’s not possible to even imagine how something of this scale could still be housed there. Despite being fully booked by exhibitors and sold out, the Hampden venue gives you the ability to breathe and move, and the bright and airy naturally lit space (at least during the afternoon session!), while pretty neutral, allows you to focus less on the venue, and more on the gathering itself.

In its 12th year now, this is the first time the festival has been held in February. There was talk of how the COP26 environmental summit in Glasgow combined with the ongoing pandemic were at fault for the organisers choosing to bump the 2021 event into 2022, but while there’s some truth in that, it was in fact the Premier Sports Cup Semi-final held at Hampden that put the final nail in November’s whisky coffin. Nothing gets in the way of Glasgow and her football - not even whisky it seems. And yet, I think everyone who attended would all agree that these extra few months, Omicron notwithstanding, made this so much more of a festival of celebrating everything we’ve missed in a much more relaxed and contemplative way. We needed this. You could feel the release in every smile, every handshake and every pour. Although I’ll admit to keeping a side-eye on a pending post-party lateral flow test as I write this.

The current organisers are still the same from the founding years, joined since (almost) the very beginning by Glasgow’s very own whisky tour-de-force Julie Hamilton. Usually a frazzled whirlwind at these events, the Elixir global brand ambassador was, for this one, strangely calm and settled. She seemed to have the mindfulness to pause and enjoy it, despite constant radio chatter in her ear-piece. The most behind-the-scenes face of the team is Mark Connelly, he’s there but you’ll likely not spot him. This unassuming but laser-focused backroom battler has, in recent years, taken a step back from the frenetic frontline of the whisky scene. While you may see him pouring drams from behind the occasional event table, you’re more likely to find him out in the wild these days, behind a camera instead. Yet, as he makes use of his slight frame to zip through the whisky festival hordes toward the next mini-emergency requiring attention, you’re not likely to realise how he’s affected the whisky scene while he was active over the years (remember Whisky Whisky Whisky Forum as an example?). Finally, we have Paul McDonagh, the owner of Glasgow’s Bon Accord pub and ale house. You’ll often find him there, behind the bar, alongside his son Thomas and the rest of the team at Glasgow’s laid-back and welcoming whisky haven. Paul has a warm and natural way of connecting with anyone who cares enough to be curious about whisky. A great ambassador for the drink, the city and especially its legendary hospitality, he’s a perfect face for what my out-of-town festival-regular friends declared to be, once more, “the best whisky festival!”

Is it though?

Well, for me, yes. The only negatives we heard about were trivial. Some in the evening session, we heard, did not cope with their intake so well, probably due to unwise ‘warm-up” drinks beforehand. If that’s your plan, fine, but I’d recommend you save your money. There’s more than you can ever reasonably want at the event, and you’ll enjoy it more with a fresh palate. There was also a story or two about people unable to get their hands on more water easily. I didn’t experience that. I had two free bottles on request and I used the free-pour jugs available on every table.

Every festival has a different vibe and a slightly differing setup but I’ve yet to leave a festival feeling anything other than happy. Even the festivals that focus more on ‘standard’ pours - core ranges that you may be very familiar with - still have the people, the spirit and the camaraderie that whisky demands. But, perhaps more so in this odd, postponed year, this one felt different; better, somehow more relevant and more ‘needed’ than anyone had perhaps imagined. Most of my, now somewhat lost, voice was spent speaking with people who I’d never met before, everyone gleefully sharing how happy they were to ‘be back’.

A lot has happened in whisky during these pandemic years and the event somehow unintentionally reflected that. While the demographic was frustratingly still overwhelmingly middle-aged-upwards and male, there was also a vibrant youth, younger faces and much more women in the crowd than I remember seeing before. Unfortunately not enough to balance the sheer number of informed women pouring and sharing knowledge from behind the tables, but progress nonetheless. Work to do still for everyone who is proud to be part of the scene.

More so, again perhaps unintentionally, it was able to illustrate the differences in whisky and where it’s going. Independent bottlers of all sizes blossom everywhere. It’s hard to keep up. This is also true of new brands and new distilleries. One of our most knowledgeable whisky club faces was working the show and as we paused to speak briefly, he broke mid-sentence to point at a stand and ask, “Who the hell is Ardgowan?” I get it. So many new brands and faces. Even invested, whisky ‘geeks’ can’t keep up. Festivals are key for communicating these developments in an efficient, shared space. The growth in the vibrant diversity and choice is showing no sign of slowing. Which I think probably brings me to a point I’ve been meaning to make since the first paragraph. One I contemplatively made to my friends as we transferred back to the city afterwards. The two biggest producers of malt whisky; Diageo and Pernod Ricard, were nowhere to be seen.

Now I hear you. They are blenders and focused on different things, I know. They are focused on building legacy brands and taking them into new markets that may, or may not, open up. That’s their model. But I hope they had some feet present there at least - because there’s a story to tell. These ‘new’ brands of just a few years ago are today’s clamoured-for legends. They are being catapulted forward by impassioned whisky-loving ownership and being embraced by the throngs of eager fans thirsty for their natural and flavourful products. This is the future, let there be no doubt. It was difficult to get close to Glenallachie’s Billy Walker, who was asked for just as many selfies as bottle details; both measures of today’s informed customer. North Star’s Iain Croucher - no doubt buoyed by the recent extension to his independent bottling projects with a distillery in Campbeltown - seemed so high on energy you could believe his under-table pour was Red Bull. More intense and excited crowds gathered around Kilkerran, Springbank, Isle of Arran and Loch Lomond. The Ardnamurchan team looked wonderfully drunk on praise alone. Daftmill didn’t attend because they simply cannot offer enough whisky to sate this voracious demand.

Our two biggest producers own some dearly-loved gems in the Scotch whisky scene, as both brands and distilleries, as well as delicious Irish and world whiskies. By their silence, they are making more of a statement than if they’d been there, even just to share their core wares. A profound statement to the curious community in attendance, and also the largest concentration of ‘influencers’ I’ve seen gathered anywhere. It’s interesting, but not surprising.

This year was remarkable, and it could be argued that it was exceptional. A year with more eagerness to enjoy what makes us mortal than we’ve ever had before. But actually, I think it’s just the vibe of this ‘thing’. It’s such a great draw for the whisky lovers to our city generally, but for me it feels like an annual release. There’s a personal sense that it’s every bit ‘my’ festival, in my city. I don’t think I’m alone. It’s whisky. It’s Glasgow. This is its festival. It’s a belter. And we’d missed it more than we’d realised.

I’d love to hear from anyone who attended. Did they feel as welcome as I did? That’s the key. I think they did. I hope they did. I hope that everyone who attends can be made to feel like it can be theirs too, wherever they’re from. Because even after a lost year and a delay, there’s nothing rusty about any of it.

See you all for the 2022 event on November 12th.