It’s Festival Friday & this time in six months we will be enjoying our Dornoch Whisky Festival Grand Tasting!

Our tickets for the Grand Tasting will be going on sale soon! Pre-sale, for those of you who are subscribers starts on the 6th of May and the general release tickets are from the 13th of May!

We will of course be releasing more details of events once all the details have been finalised and we’re looking forward to announcing this years VIP! In fact, we’re excited about this years festival which will be our 5th one and we can’t wait to share it with you all.

So, with that in mind, we thought we’d give you a little update with what’s been happening in our beautiful town of Dornoch.

Dornoch Castle Hotel

New to Dornoch this year is The Vault @ Dornoch Castle! This is a perfect venue for private dining, whisky tastings or meetings and can be found in the heart of 15th century Dornoch Castle. Not only have they created the amazing private dining and whisky tasting vault, but they have also opened their new restaurant ‘Grant MacNicol At The Castle’. Both these venues will be put to amazing use at the Dornoch Whisky Festival and keep an eye out for more details coming your way soon!

Dornoch Distillery

Then we have the Thompson brothers who have been so busy since our last festival! Firstly, their Organic Highland Gin won them Gold for UK contemporary style at the World Gin Awards 2019 and they followed that up with Silver for Brand Design in the UK! They’re also relocating – don’t worry, not too far away just for a slightly bigger premises to expand. Oh, and they also took a trip to Japan! Ask them about it when you see them in 6 months and as a matter of fact, ask them about all the other stuff they’re going to have achieved by then too!

Links House at Royal Dornoch

Over at the gorgeous Links House Hotel at Royal Dornoch they have amassed seven wins at the 2019 Scottish Hotel Awards including the Highland Regional Winners of Deputy Manager, F&B Manager, Boutique Hotel, Country Sports Shooting & Stalking, Fine Dining Restaurant, Golf Hotel and Luxury Town Hotel. They’re now onto the 2019 national Scottish Hotel Awards to being held in Edinburgh on Sunday April 28th, so wish them luck!

Royal Dornoch Golf Club

The RDGC continues to be one of the best places in the world to play golf and no surprise here, but they’re in the process of making it even better. They’ve made a minor but significant change to the 10th hole by moving the central bunker further from the green by 6 yards and the new 7th hole is settling in well and they hope to open it for play in the Spring of 2020.

The Carnegie Whisky Cellars

The whole team at the Carnegie Whisky Cellars have had an amazing six months where they collaborated with Poppyscotland and Wolfburn Distillery to create an exclusive bottling to honour the centenary of the First World War and held several special tasting events which resulted in them raising £14,107.56 for the Poppyscotland! On top of that, for the second time in almost 3 years of trading, they recently won ‘Off License of the Year’ at the prestigious Scottish Independent Retailing Awards hosted by Creative Oceanic.

The Eagle Hotel

Last but by no means least, is the Eagle Hotel who have also done fantastically at the 2019 Scottish Hotel Awards in the Highland Regional categories! Their wins include Drinks Specialist, Country Sports Fishing Eagle Hotel, Hotel Bar (Beer) and Inn! They too will be heading down to the 2019 national Scottish Hotel Awards this Sunday, so make sure to wish them luck too!

There’s been much much more happening in Dornoch over the past six months, but we thought we’d just give you a wee update on our favourite venues, hopefully you’ll be seeing them yourself in six months for our 5th Dornoch Whisky Festival!

Until next time, whisky lovers.

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