The Islay Whisky Academy Residential Diploma for Spring 2024 has wrapped. It doesn’t quite seem real. Those six days spent on the whisky isle felt like a whirlwind. A hurricane of information and experience, of new friendships and new perspectives and of whiskies so good, you could spend a lifetime trying to describe them.
Where knowledge awakens our senses to the technicality of craft, and history and culture come alive in Scottish kinship.
It’s about discovery and delight, awareness and learning and feeling a sense of belonging amongst fellow whisky-lovers and distillers.
Our comprehensive theoretical, practical and cultural courses, lectures and tastings are underpinned by captivating technical information, imparted in unique, illuminating and meaningful ways.
Damp green vegetal barley, like in the malt barns when the floors are first laid down with grain.
White nougat. Lovely tingle into the nose. The essence of warm sand dunes. And the sweet fleeting aroma of white candy floss. Honey and ripe bananas.
Fèis Ìle 2024 ~ Laphroaig & Port Ellen Another fantastic day at Fèis Ìle 2024. Who are we to let a raindrop stop play! Great
Feis Ile 2024 – Day 3… What a day! Friends old and new and a few good drams and beers…
Recognised worldwide as the soul of the Scottish spirit, whisky’s warm and welcoming heritage forms the heartbeat of Islay Whisky Academy.
Providing online, residential, day and half-day courses, lectures, tastings and experiences, Islay Whisky Academy opens your mind to a world far beyond taste.
Through fascinating insights enabling you to interpret everything from the dance between heritage and history; to the ways that music, literature and language weave into a dram’s ever-unfolding story, you learn how to nose, taste and appreciate whisky in an expansive, supportive environment.
When you learn more and start connecting on an elemental level with what you’re drinking, you recognise how weather, trees, minerals, animals, people and place are all intrinsically part of whisky, its history and its evolvement.
When we begin to understand the generosity embedded in the environment of whisky, we are filled with a sense of gratitude and care for our planet. This underpins all of the Academy’s values.