Grand Cayman’s highest point may be Mount Trashmore, but the country’s first Scotch whisky festival brought a taste of the more picturesque Scottish Highlands to the islands.
Cask, a whisky bar in Camana Bay, celebrated Scotland’s most famous export in a four-day extravaganza dedicated to ‘uisge beatha’, Gaelic for ‘water of life’, featuring the biggest range of fine malt whiskies in the Caribbean.
Matt MacPherson, co-owner of Cask with Rob Eyers, said the pair bonded after Rob, who runs a tech firm in Cayman, visited his whisky bar in Inverness, home town to both of them and dubbed ‘the capital of the Highlands’.
MacPherson said, “He was recommended to visit my bar, the Malt Room, by the hotel he was staying in in Inverness, and he thought maybe there was an opportunity to do something like that in the Cayman Islands.
“I was looking for a new challenge and I told myself it’s time to take whisky to the Cayman Islands. We started to look at locations and Camana Bay was where we wanted to be.”
Cask has been open for just over a year and MacPherson said the bar, decorated in the browns and greens of the Scottish landscape with a touch of Caribbean blue and the brighter tones of the region, had already attracted a following, as well as a ‘best cocktail bar’ 2025 award.
The bar also stocks a range of fine rums to reflect the Caribbean’s own history of distilling.
MacPherson said, “It’s been great. It’s been a really good first year. People have really taken a liking to Scotch.”
He added, “We have more than 400 bottles. We’ve done some research and we’re confident we have the biggest selection in the Caribbean.”
Breaking down barriers
MacPherson said that some were intimidated by the mystique surrounding whisky and scared to experiment.
He added, “Whisky festivals are very popular in Scotland. We wanted to share that with people and take away the barriers to enjoying whisky.
“People can feel barriers and feel a little intimidated by it. We really wanted to open the doors to Cask and let everyone, beginner to connoisseur, enjoy our whisky.”
The bar features everything from peaty malts from places such as Islay, an island off the west coast of Scotland, to lighter and sweeter varieties from Speyside in the north-east of the country.
MacPherson said the bar’s most expensive dram was an extremely rare 39-year-old Brora malt from a long-closed distillery, which retails at $1,000 a glass.
But, he added, most of Cask’s offerings were much more affordable, with Monkey Shoulder, from the same stable as top-selling Glenfiddich, on offer at about $5 a measure.
MacPherson said, “We also do a lot of cocktails here … you can use Scotch in many ways and we like to use it in cocktails and be creative.”
He added, “Caymanians have a real appreciation of high quality and there is a real interest in trying a premium product.
“But you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a nice time and enjoy some really nice drinks.”
Passion project
Eyers describes the bar as a “passion project” for him and MacPherson.
Eyers, who has lived in Cayman for more than two decades and heads technology firm Unified Tech in George Town, said a lot of people in Cayman already had an appreciation of good Scotch and are an untapped market for a bigger choice.
He added from conception to opening of Cask’s doors in Camana Bay took just two years.
“The landlord has been great,” he said. “We went from an empty shell, just concrete walls, to open in just seven months.”
It’s not all just whisky at Cask, as he said, “We put a lot of thought into the rum collection to reflect the Caribbean and a lot of thought into cocktails too.”
The event, which also featured traditional Scottish folk music, ran from Thursday, 6 Nov. to Sunday, 9 Nov.
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