Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - we were sailing
Last weekend we were sailing, we were on a whisky cruise - for 48 hours. The two of us locked in on the cruise ship Cinderella together with 1500 other whisky nerds. Two round trips Stockholm - Åland.
The island of Åland is an autonomous region of Finland, and conveniently defined as a special economic region as well. This opens the possibility of tax free sales of whisky on board! So why not have a whisky fair on board as well?! The Cinderella Whisky Fair was first established in 2009, and it it said to be the world's largest whisky fair at sea.
The concept
Let's get the facts out of the way first, just to paint you a picture, sort of give you the frame work of the whole experience:
We enter the ship at 5.15 pm, the festival then runs from 6 till 10 pm.
The ship stays in the harbor as long as the festival is open. The reason being that the festival area is on deck 3, the car deck. You are not really supposed to stay here when the ship is at sea - security etc.
During the night the ship will sail to Åland, dock (briefly) at Mariehamn, before returning to Stockholm.
The festival re-opens at 11 am, when the ship is back in the harbor, and stays open until 2 pm.
At 3.30 pm we disembark, carrying bags full of tax free whisky.
Repeat up to three times; Thur-Fri, Fri-Sat, and Sat-Sun. (We did two trips, skipping the last one in favor of a day and a night in Stockholm.)
There are lots of masterclasses, in fact close to 40 per cruise.
35 stands in the festival area, and hundreds of whiskies on offer.
Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - Shane
Better prepared this year
Last year was our first trip to Cinderella Whisky Fair (see reports here and here), and we learned a few lessons:
No masterclasses the first evening!
We did follow this advice this year, and it worked a charm! Lots more time to be social on the festival floor.
No Buffet Dinners!
Yep! Good advice. The Buffet Dinner takes too long, and is scheduled during the open hours of the festival. Instead we had dinner at two great restaurants on board, one of which kept serving food until 4.30 am!
Book a larger cabin!
Where the cabin last year felt very claustrophobic, the one we had this year (at only a marginally higher price) was a lot better.
Buy any whisky bottles on the first cruise!
Again this year we saw many sought after releases sold out during the first cruise. This is not down to the distributors and whisky companies themselves, this is mainly down to Cinderella and the Viking Line. They decide what whisky to make available and they buy all the whisky from the companies, then sell it on board.
Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - Jari
The Box Whisky Stampede
The Swedish distillery Box Whisky announced a couple of weeks before the fair that they would release a special bottling for the fair - Box Whisky The Archipelago Baltic Sea 2015. The outturn was limited to 700 bottles, and they would sell off 300 bottles on the first cruise, then 200 on each of the last two.
No one had anticipated the wild crazy this sparked in the whisky hungry hoards on the ship! It was mayhem, it was a stampede. People were climbing on top of each other, clawing their way forward. It was Beatles hysteria. We have never seen anything like this at a whisky festival, neither had anyone else that was witness to this spectacle. We had no chances at all of obtaining any bottles.
Cinderella Whisky fair 2015 - Box Whisky
On the second cruise there was more order, but the craze was just as big. The air abuzz with rumors of what had happened the day before. There were many guards in place this time around, like Magnus Fagerström - hired muscle for Box Whisky. Luckily we managed to obtain the whisky on this second attempt, but it was crazy. The rest of the festival was on hold for these few wild minutes.
There must be a better way of doing this next year, if they try again.
The masterclasses
We had three masterclasses altogether this time, one on the first morning session, then one evening and one morning session on the second cruise. They were all very different, but good:
Thomas Sundblom from Clydesdale
Presenting whiskies from various independent bottlers.
Very knowledgeable presenter, with a relaxed and informative style - and great whisky.
The standout whisky was a 7 YO Aultmore from A.D. Rattray.
George Grant from Glenfarclas
Presenting (unfortunately) only core range whiskies from Glenfarclas.
We had hoped for at least some Family Casks, as they have done on previous occasions, but that was not to be. Again I do think Viking Line was to blame for this.
George had lots of great stories to tell, and did a great job, but the whiskies - while good by all means - somewhat of a disappointment. We had tried them all before...
Ian Millar from Glenfiddich
This was a morning session, starting at 10 am, and Ian had brought no less than 8 whiskies!
Three core range (Vintage series), three cask samples and two old rarities.
Fantastic to hear Ian, great storyteller with lots of humor. It was fun, from start to finish!
Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - Ian
Whisky highlights
There were of course many whisky highlights on these two cruises, and there will be a lot of reviews coming up on the blog over the next few weeks. Let me list a select few special treats though, to give you an idea of what was on offer:
Balvenie Tun 1509 Batch 1
Certainly a good dram, but not sure I understand what all the fuzz is about.
Bunnahabhain 1990 22 YO Blackadder Raw Cask
A really, really lovely old Bunnahabhain!
Bruichladdich Black Art 04.1 1990 23 YO
Still quirky, still magic, although there seems to be less use of wine casks this time around.
Bruichladdich Bere Barley 2008
Amazingly crisp and clean barley nose! A great experience.
Aultmore 7 YO A.D. Rattray
Surprisingly mature and soft sherry bomb and only seven years old.
Teerenpeli Hosa
Unpeated but matured in ex-Islay casks, which gave it a smooth and soft peat note.
Mortlach Special Strength
OK, so now I have tasted it, and I really like it!
Glenfiddich 1973 Vintage 35 YO
Delicate, soft and fruity - simply delightful!
Mackmyra Vintage
A new bottling to be released in February 2015. Mackmyra is going from strength to strength now. Great stuff!
Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - Karl
Cinderella Whisky Fair 2015 - summary
It was really great to see so many friends and acquaintances! We literally spent the first three hours of the festival just covering half the festival floor - there was so much catching up to do we hardly had time for whisky.
Will we be back again next year? Most certainly! This is one quirky and fun festival.
Sláinte!
- Thomas
