If you’re not familiar with the concept of Whisky Live, basically it is this:

• Buy a ticket (around £50-75)
• Turn up, on time
• Receive your program and free Whisky Live branded Glencairn glass
• Go around the rooms trying as many or as few of the whiskies on display as possible
• Buy what you need or loved at the temporary store on the way out

As ever, as soon as we arrived it started raining, but with our spirits undeterred we headed towards the amber spirit that would see us through the occasional rainy patch, whisky.

I’m astounded every year by the breadth of people you see at the event, and Whisky Live 2014 was no different.

There were:

• Those who knew
• Those wanting to be in the know
• Those thinking they knew and
• Those who take it all far too seriously

We started off by visiting the Whisky Discovery guys (Dave & Kat) on the Balcones stand to sample their ever punchy multi-award winning whisky straight from Texas, often billed as “A one-of-a-kind Texas spirit, made with all Texas ingredients”.

Always a pleasure to try and talk about Balcones, even more so to sample their new single malt – lighter than I expected, but only in comparison to True Blue (my favourite of their products), and with a lot more depth than maybe we have seen in some of their releases. Worth a try if you get a chance.

Other highlights included sampling Kavalan  Taiwanese whisky for the first time, and it being really nice albeit more spicy than I’m normally interested in. Strangely, not too far away was the world’s only Dutch whisky – I liked this but could not really describe it, felt quite palatable yet more like a session whisky than one to be savoured or given much time to.

It was really nice to see some examples of Glencairn glasswear on their stand to see what all the brands have been having created to stand out in bars, at events and likely in the home – gave me a few ideas for the next stages of the blog too so stay tuned.

I must stress here that for me Whisky Live is all about trying single malts, grains and blends that I either have never had the chance to try or that I don’t have in the cabinet at home so am in need of a bit of convincing.

With that in mind we headed to the much anticipated Girvan single grain whisky stand from William Grant’s.

I have been looking to get my hands on a Girvan single grain anything for months so to be able to try a couple full drams each of their incredible “4 Apps”, 25 Year Old Launch Edition and 30 year old was a real treat and worth the money in alone.

It was here that my brand consultant head briefly reared itself and I stood back in awe at their incredibly detailed and interesting packaging design, brand application, iconography, photographic style (especially their visual tasting notes) and the all round polished feel of a brand that has been well thought out and decades in the making. So much so that I dashed over to Billie at The Whisky Exchange and bought a 25 Year Old Launch Edition, one of only 500.