Scottish Festival Estes Park

Hi all,

This is the second part of our experiences at the Estes Park Scottish Festival. We went up on Saturday morning and took the time to watch over all the colors and noises of the festival. We had a lot of fun watching the various activities and would recommend going up there just to see various events.

The first thing we ran into was some of the dogs warming up for the various competitions they have.




After that we spent some time watching the athletic events. It was amazing watching them pick up those huge logs and tossing them about.








Following that, as we were heading to meet my father, who was coming by to see things with us, we heard a dull thunder that kept rising in volume as we approached a few tents. Inside were the dancing competitions and wow, they were incredible moving and stomping around with a flash of color in their costumes.




And, of course the bag pipers were making music throughout the festival. We all very much enjoyed our time watching the dogs, pipers, and dancers, as well as the pretty darn cool games and we decided to go try the food. This is a carnival type event so we went to a few different vendors and snacked to try the wares.


The very first thing we tried was a Scotch egg.




A hard boiled egg, sausage wrapped and then deep fried. A yummy heart attack on a plate. This was really good and I truly enjoyed it and could have had one or more.


The second thing we ran into was a meat pie that came with mashed potatoes and peas.



This was decent. It had a nice amount of meat and a good taste and actually pretty good as far as festival food goes.

The next thing was a bread bowl full of Chili.





This was ok, considering the cold day, but to be honest the most that can really be said of it is that it was hot; the chili itself was fair, and the bread about the same.


Lastly was a Pasty from the same place the Chili bowl came from.



A pasty is a meat filled pie basically and normally very darn good. However in this instance, it was not. In fact, one bite is all we could do. The pasty was hard as a rock and tasted like cardboard and the inside was as dry as the same rock. This was just plain bad, bad for carnival food bad for dog food.


All in all I would encourage you to go to the fair, enjoy the festivities, they are well worth enjoying. Drink the beer (plenty of Guiness all around) and by all means go to the Scotch Tasting. It was great, but except for snacking (I still want another Scotch egg) don’t eat your meal of the day here go on into the town of Estes Park and come back for more of the fun.


Thanks as always for coming by our Colorado dining and food blog, If you have any questions or comments please let us know at jonathan or barb@milehigheater.com

Scottish Festival the Weekend of Brigadoon.

Weekend of Brigadoon
Hi all,
Recently we were asked out to the Scottish/ Irish Festival up in Estes Park, initially when I received the email inviting us I was well, um why us? We deal with restaurants and that like and they explained they had some venders who did Scottish food as well as a Whiskey expert doing a Scotch tasting class. Scotch tasting? I thought, well that has promise. How can an invite to a Scotch tasting ever be a bad thing and for the most part I was right. With that thought, let’s get to it.

The first thing I will talk about without Barb at all because she decided to sit out the Scotch lecture and tasting (silly girl). Ok, going into a scotch tasting seminar I honestly was not thinking it would be educational, but surprisingly, the person who hosted it was Robert Sickler who is a master of whiskey (yes, you read that right, he is a master of whiskey - now that sounds like a fun job) was incredibly knowledgeable and shared his wealth of knowledge, as well of his love of the drink with us.

I had to ask what a master of whiskey does and what Mr. Sickler told me was that as a Master of Whisky I work as a brand ambassador for the whiskies of Diageo, which include Johnnie Walker, the Classic Malts of Scotland, Crown Royal, Buchanan’s Scotch whisky, Bushmills Irish Whisky, Crown Royal, George Dickel Tennessee whisky, and Bulleit Bourbon.

I host whisky tastings and whisky dinners throughout Colorado, as well as Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. In addition, I function as a whisky knowledge resource for distributors, key accounts, and Diageo cluster teams.

Robert Sickler is the one on the right.



When they opened up the door to the room where the tasting would take place a very talented bag piper started playing and the wonderful smell of scotch wafted out of the room and we all took our chairs and waited for Robert Sickler to get started.




The lecture started out with a moment of silence as this was September 11th and I thought that was a very nice thing to spend a moment in remembrance of that day and our troops regardless of your feelings on current politics. Then he gave us some basic information about whiskey and I will list a few of the main points of interest as well as little bullet points.
1. The Irish invented Scotch but these days the Scottish scotch whiskey and the Irish scotch have a few differences. In Ireland, they don’t use peat in the process and they distill the scotch 3 times, which they say provides a smoother better scotch.
2. In Scotland they do use peat in the process which adds a distinctive smell and taste to it and only distill the scotch 2 times (they say the Irish do it 3 times because they can’t get it right in 2 ).
3. A single malt scotch only has 3 ingredients: Water, Barley, and Yeast. That’s it.
4. Scotch comes out of the cask much, much stronger than we normally see it here, unless you get a bottle of cask strength. But, they add water to it from their spring at the brewery to mellow it down to around 80 proof.
After the initial presentation, he took us through tasting 7 different scotches from 7 different areas and he talked a little about where each one came from. We smelled it, took a small taste, then he gave a toast and we finished it off. I was amazed by how very different each scotch really was depending on where it was made and what kind of wood it was stored in.
The Scotches we tried here were The Singleton of Glendullan, Bushmills 10 and 16 year old, Clynelish 14 year old, Caol Ila 12 year old, Talisker 10 year old and GLenkinchie 12 year old. My personal favorites were the Talisker and the Caol Ila.


Another really fun part of the scotch tasting was watching some of the faces of those who were not all that much into scotch when they tried the different ones. The “scotch” faces they made were great and almost had me spitting my scotch due to laughter.
As we were about to drink our last scotch this fellow came strolling on in


to make the toast and of course we were all more than happy to share the whiskey with a leprechaun and hope he helped luck favor us for it.

One of the toasts of many was this one just to give an example of a good scotch toast:
May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light, may good luck pursue you each morning and night.


If you ever get the chance and you have any interest at all, I would highly recommend coming up to the scotch tasting next year it is well worth the cost of admission!
I am going to make the Scottish festival visit into 2 parts and end here this week. Come back next week to read more about how our visit to the festival proper went!


Thanks as always for stopping by our Colorado restaurant and food blog. If you have any comments or questions feel free to contact us here or at jonathan or barb@milehigheater.com

Bald Pate Inn

7/1/2008

Hi all,


I've decided to add a restaurant we really like but is much more casual than what I have put up here in the past. The restaurant is called the Bald Pate Inn and it is up above Estes Park, Colorado. It is a Bed and Breakfast that is celebrating its 92nd year this year and it is by far one of my favorite places to go for lunch or dinner when we are up in Estes. The restaurant itself is showing it's years a bit but that really is part of its charm and the view from the dining room is just amazing looking down from it's perch above the Estes Valley.

The menu is just soup and salads with some great desserts to finish it up. They normally have 2 soups to choose from and these are both very hearty and made on the premises, some of the choices we have seen are white chili, chili, vegetable, vegetable beef and chicken and each and everyone of them are so very good and filing with large chunks of meat and vegetables it just puts a smile on your face and a sigh to the belly! To go along with the soup they have a great salad bar filled with tons of fresh ingredients and normally 2 specialty salads also made fresh there. We have seen many varieties here from apple walnut to a pasta salad. The final bit they have is fresh made bread and muffins and these are always my doom with the taste and the freshness just making me eat that extra bite then one more. They also have some very good tasting desserts but even more than your standard restaurant I seldom have the room to try it out!





The Bald pate is normally open from May- October and while reservations are not required they are strongly suggested. If you are heading up there for more than just a day trip, the Bald Pate also offers cabins and rooms to rent which all seem very cozy but the real reason to stay here is the view and it’s out of the way location. I am not going to rate this place on our standard scale as it is more casual but we try to make it up there 2 or 3 times a year and in a world with so many options that is a large compliment in itself! The Bald Pates website is http://www.baldpateinn.com/ and it is located at 4900 South Hwy. 7 Estes Park, CO 80517 with a phone number of 970-586-6151.


Thanks again for stopping by and if have any questions or suggestions please let us know.
Jonathan