Whisky Live brings the country's longest-running tasting to Surfers Paradise

Whisky Live – Australia's longest-running whisky tasting event – returns to the Gold Coast on 22 August at the JW Marriott in Surfers Paradise. The draw is breadth and ease: a large open-floor selection of whiskies to taste at your own pace, free masterclasses running through the day, and hot and cold food folded into the ticket. It is pitched squarely at the room rather than the specialist – equally at home for a first-timer finding their feet as for a collector chasing something new.

More details: Whisky Live.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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Whisky Live heads west to the Duxton in September

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Whisky Abbey moves to a bigger room for its 2026 'Destinations' edition