Fèis Ìle 2024 – A look back
The Islay Festival Fèis Ìle 2024 has been over for a few days now, and we’d like to offer our readers a brief look back at the Kilchoman Open Day on Thursday 30 May, complete with plenty of photos.
It was another fantastic Kilchoman Open Day, blessed with glorious weather. Visitors to the distillery were once again treated to an extensive programme that day – the tried-and-tested mix of special distillery and farm tours, masterclass tastings and numerous other events that has been a favourite for years. In addition, a new highlight of the programme – the Machir Bay Sunset Drams – took place as early as Tuesday 28 May: a special whisky tasting on the beach at Machir Bay at sunset.
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Visitors were able to tour all the distillery’s main production areas, and there were plenty of opportunities to have in-depth conversations with the staff. The popular ‘Be a Bottler’ activity offered the chance to bottle your own personalised bottle of a Distillery Exclusive Single Cask Release.
Throughout the day, there was live music from Rhuval, Ceol an Aire and the Kilchoman Distillery Isle of Islay Pipe Band. There were plenty of prizes to be won in games of skill. The Whisky Bar offered a selection of past and current bottlings from Kilchoman Limited Editions, Comraich Batches and Single Casks, whilst the cocktail bar served a range of different whisky cocktails. A BBQ featuring locally sourced meat, light bites from the salad bar, tea, coffee and homemade cakes from the café left nothing to be desired in terms of food. And, of course, visitors could stock up on all Kilchoman branded merchandise in the distillery shop.
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The Fèis Ìle special edition, eagerly anticipated as always, was a vatting of two bourbon casks from 2011. The whisky was distilled from barley grown on Kilchoman’s own fields and was subsequently unpeated. A rare opportunity to taste an “unpeated” Kilchoman.
The 482 bottles – limited to one per person – were sold to visitors at the Kilchoman Open Day for £110 and sold out within a short time.
For Kilchoman fans who were unable to attend the festival in person, the distillery organised two different online tastings this time, in addition to numerous live broadcasts throughout the day. The tasting with Emma McHarrie and James Wills, which took place at 11:00 Islay time, focused on peat: “The Impact of Peat: From Unpeated to Heavily Peated”, whilst the online tasting with Anthony and Peter Wills at 14:00 Islay time looked at new Kilchoman bottlings: “Exploring New and Upcoming Releases”.
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I would particularly like to thank my friend Martin Brendel, who provided most of the photos!
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