As Rasmus told earlier this week, Uisge Whiskey Festival was held at Vanha Ylioppilastalo (old student house) in Helsinki this weekend. I made a list of the best things at Uisge 2016 – naturally from a Finnish point of view.

The Helsinki Distilling Company

One of the newest distilleries in Finland that I am aware of, Helsinki Distilling company participated the Uisge festival for the first time. The whiskeys are still young and they actually had a 1 year old Prelude Single Malt available for tasting. I had a taste of it and to be honest it wasn’t too bad. Let’s see where they end up in the next ten years or so.

In the mean time you might want to try their Helsinki dry gin and Helsingfors Fiskehamns Akvavit and long drinks (ready made mix of gin and juice).

Betelgeuse Design handmade Whiskey Glasses

At the corner of a stand stood a young man promoting quite unique whiskey glasses he had designed. Matias Lehmusjärvi, a industrial design student, told us the story how he wanted to create a handmade glass and ended up collaborating with a Finnish glass factory Nuutajärvi. His whiskey glasses are all unique and made in patches of 50 glasses after which the glass mold needs to be renewed. In other words each patch is different and since the glassblowers manufacture all glasses one by one, no glass is exactly the same.

The glasses cost about 30-40 € a piece and should be available at his online store soon at www.betelgeusedesign.com

Valamo Monastery Distillery

Well there isn’t much to say about Valamo Monastery Distillery yet (since it was established 2014), but I did find it quite interesting to notice that a monastery had also caught up to the new distillery wave here in Finland too. According to Wikipedia, The annual capacity of the Valamo distillery will be 120 000 litres, and it will be the biggest distillery in Finland in the future. I have to keep this distillery in mind in the future.

Midleton Single Cask whiskey for IWY

Specially selected to celebrate 10 years of Friends of Irish Whisky (IWY, Irlantilaisen Whiskin Ystävät), Midleton was one of my favourite whiskies at the whisky Festival. It is available at Alko’s whiskey selections but with a limited availability. I heard that there are about 70-80 bottles left and the price for a bottle is a bit over 200 €. Nevertheless, I do think it’s worth it and would consider buying on if I had any extra at my bank account at the moment!

-Marjo

p.s. I would also recommend trying out Teerenpeli Distelliry’s whiskies if you’re in Finland.