How to experience a Twhisky tasting

On Sunday night at 8pm, we’re going to start the first official Twhisky tasting event. And of course, we’re getting a lot of people asking how it’s going to work.

There are people who have joined Twitter just so they can be part of the Twhisky community, and there are others who already use Twitter, but can’t see how it can be used for anything other than overhearing a couple of guys drinking whisky and saying how nice it is.

Someone even asked if they could download their dram from our website.

So we’ve put together this simple guide that will help you enjoy and participate in this momentous Twitter event on the occasion of Robert Burns’ 250th anniversary: Burns’ Night 2009.

1) If you haven’t already – sign up to Twitter. Then head to the Twhisky page, and click the follow button. Now, when you go to your main Twitter page, and you’ll see us turn up in your timeline.

2) Download a Twitter client. We recommend Tweetdeck, but you may prefer other options. This is a piece of software that displays your Twitter feed, and allows you to do more things like search for keywords, or create groups that are meaningful or interesting to you. [Actually, this bit’s optional – though it improves the experience]

3) Make sure you’ve got at least one of the malts we’re going to be tasting, a glass for each person (preferably something tulip shaped – or a small wineglass will do in a pinch). The three whiskies we’re tasting are the Isle of Jura 10 year old, the Aberlour 10 year old and the Laphroaig 10. We don’t supply or sell them – but they’re quite easy to find. You can just have one – or you can do all three if you like. Entirely up to you. Have a small jug of water to hand too.

4) Open your Twitter client or Twitter homepage in time for the Twhisky event (that’s 8pm GMT – UK time). You’ll see us start to introduce the tasting. We’re going to keep it nice and straightforward as there are a lot of people who haven’t been to a tasting before. Tasting whisky is quite different to drinking whisky – but we’ll explain all that. We’ll also explain what haggis, neeps and tatties are – because we’ll be having them too.

5) We’re going to put this code into all our tasting messages on the night: #twhisky – It’s called a hashtag, and it’s a way of marking a particular ‘tweet’ as being about a particular thing.

6) We’re going to be asking you what you think as the evening progresses and will be reading, responding to and sometimes re-tweeting your messages. We would ask that when you send messages to us, please start it with @twhisky (so that we know it’s for us) and end it with #twhisky. Your 140 characters must include those. You don’t have to do the hashtag during the week, but we’d like all the responses on the night tagged please.

7) If you want to follow the conversation and see what everyone’s saying to us and to each other on the night, simply follow the hashtag. Click on the link it creates in Tweetdeck, or use Twitter search to find everything with that keyword in it.

And it’s as simple as that. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We’d love to have you join in, and get the benefit of the amazing range of experience our Twhisky community shares.

Catch you on Sunday.