The Carnegie Whisky Cellars celebrates its 1st Birthday with a National Award! As they approach their first full year of trading, they were extremely pleased to be nominated by the public for the Scottish Independent Retail Awards. As the only finalists North of Inverness in their category, they were even more pleased to be named as winners in their regional category of North of Scotland! They were, however, thoroughly surprised and delighted, not only to win that but to take the top award for best independent off license in Scotland.

This adds to a stellar year for Dornoch, as the world famous Dornoch Castle Whisky Bar next door to the Carnegie Courthouse took top awards for Whisky Bar of the year at the SLTN awards and pub of the year in Caithness and Sutherland in the CAMRA awards, they are also the number one ranked Whisky Hotel in the World on whiskybase.com. The town itself was the only Scottish finalist in the Great British High Street awards in the Rising Star category. Adding to this, the Thompson Brothers whose family owns the Dornoch Castle Hotel started production at the new Dornoch Distillery – housed in the towns old 1881 Fire House – on the 30th November and they recently launched their first ten experimental batches.

As a very small but dedicated and enthusiastic team they are grateful for the amazing support their customers have shown over the past year. It was this support from their local and international customers, including their local MP, Dr Paul Monaghan that took them to the top. You can see what some of their customers are saying on TripAdvisor or Facebook.

This last year, in their bid to become a centre of excellence for Scotch whisky they have seen their disused Courthouse building in the heart of historic Dornoch, transformed into the stylish and vibrant community asset it is today, housing several local independent businesses including their Whisky Cellars, you can see their shop for yourself with their new Google virtual tour.

Whisky tastings in their elegant tasting vault have proved extremely popular and they have, over the year, developed a great customer base among locals and visitors alike. They have whisky and gin club monthly meetings, and once again the local support has been amazing.

Read more at source WhiskyIntelligence