I got off a red-eye from Portland, walked into the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel, and came face to face with an Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ car sitting in the middle of the lobby. Not a poster. Not a photo op cutout. An actual race car, green and gleaming under the hotel lights, surrounded by guests in linen and sundresses, dragging their luggage past it like it was totally normal. And to be honest, I’ve seen this at other F1 events like Las Vegas at the Venetian.
That set the tone for the next three days.
I was in Miami as a guest of Glenfiddich for the race weekend at the Miami International Autodrome. What followed was one of the most unexpected combinations I’ve encountered covering the drinks industry: single malt Scotch whisky and Formula One racing, two worlds built around precision and patience, sharing the same weekend.
What Glenfiddich Is Actually Doing in F1
Before you write this off as a standard sports sponsorship, Brand Ambassador Christiano Protti made a point of correcting that assumption early in our conversation.
“It’s not a sponsorship,” he told me over drinks on Friday night at Mirabella restaurant inside the Fontainebleau. “It’s a union of two very traditional British companies focused on innovation, very forward-thinking in everything we do. Hundreds of years of experience, prestige, technique.”
The partnership between Glenfiddich and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ launched in November 2024 at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Since then, Glenfiddich has activated at roughly seven races, including Singapore, Melbourne, Austin, Las Vegas, Silverstone, Monaco, and Miami. Each activation is tailored to its location and culture. Miami got cocktails built for heat and humidity, a 19-time flair bartending world champion behind the bar, and of course, the limited-edition bottle that was already sold out before the weekend started.
The strategic logic makes sense when you think about it. F1 has exploded in the US, largely thanks to Drive to Survive pulling in a generation of fans who had no prior connection to the sport. For a Scotch brand trying to reach people who’ve been told their whole lives that Scotch is smoky, intimidating, and not for them, a racetrack full of curious, experience-hungry fans is a pretty good place to be.
“Many people say, ‘Oh, I don’t like Scotch because of the smoky aromas,’” Christiano said. “But Glenfiddich is zero smoke. We have the opportunity at events like this to explain the tasting notes, the production, and why Glenfiddich is so special.”
That’s the plan: The race is the venue, the whisky is the education.
A Quick Word on Glenfiddich Itself
If you only know Glenfiddich as the green bottle at the back of the bar, there’s more going on than you might realize. The distillery was founded on Christmas Day, 1887, by William Grant in Dufftown, Scotland, and it remains family-owned to this day. Glenfiddich was the first single malt Scotch to be actively marketed to the world when the 12 Year Old expression began global distribution in 1963. The Waldorf Astoria in NYC was the first US hotel to carry it.
The name itself translates from Gaelic as “valley of the deer,” with “glen” meaning valley and “fiddich” meaning deer. The iconic three-sided bottle is intentional, too. Each face represents water, malted barley, and the “air of Scotland.”
It’s the best-selling single malt Scotch whisky in the world by volume, sold in more than 180 countries. The distillery has millions of barrels aging at any given time, which gives Malt Master Brian Kinsman the raw material to keep experimenting.
The fruitiness you get in almost every Glenfiddich expression? Not an accident. William Grant made a deliberate decision to engineer a fruitier spirit from the start, extending fermentation times and adjusting the distillation. “Glenfiddich: no peat, no smoke, and a fruity character,” as Christiano put it. The casks amplify it differently depending on type (my favorite being sherry casks), but the DNA is baked into the new make spirit itself.
Friday Night: The Tasting at Mirabella
The weekend kicked off with a private whisky tasting hosted by Christiano at Mirabella. We started with a welcome cocktail called the Golden Tropic Fizz, made with the Glenfiddich 14 Year Old, Orgeat, Banana de Bresil, Lemon, and Pineapple. I found it light, tropical, and a surprising introduction to what the 14 can do beyond a near pour.
The tasting flight moved through four expressions in order of age and complexity, all accompanied by a selection of meats, cheeses, and bread.
Glenfiddich 12 Year Old, Original ($44.99) is the entry point and the brand’s signature malt. On the nose, it’s fresh and fruity. The palate has hints of caramel, malt, and oak. The finish is fairly smooth and mellow, but shows its youth with a presence of alcohol. Approachable, decently balanced, and a genuinely good whisky for the price.
Glenfiddich 14 Year Old, Bourbon Barrel Reserve ($59.99) is a US exclusive, matured in ex-bourbon American Oak casks. Vanilla and caramel come to the nose. On the palate were toffee and spice, with the finish lingering, staying a bit sweet. The bourbon cask influence is obvious.
Glenfiddich x Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team™ 16 Year Old ($75.00) is where the partnership gets physical. This limited-edition expression is created in collaboration between Kinsman and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ technical team. This version is a marriage of first-fill American oak, second-fill American Oak, and ex-bourbon wine casks. The wine cask drives the fruitiness. The nose is sweet with maple syrup, spice, and subtle oak. The palate is sweet, with a good amount of viscosity. Like the 14-year-old, the finish lingered with sweetness and some spice.
“The tasting note is fruit salad and Chantilly cream,” Christiano said. “Very approachable, a balance of vanilla and toffee notes with fruitiness from the wine cask.” I was told this expression was sold out, but checking Glenfiddich’s website, there appear to be still some bottles available.
Glenfiddich 21 Year Old Gran Reserva ($224.99) closes the flight with a dramatic shift in complexity. The nose is intense: floral, fig, slight banana, and oak. The palate is soft upfront, then turns bright, peppery spice and dry. As you can imagine, any 21-year-old expression, the finish was long, warm, and maintained that spicy taste. After 21 years in American Oak ex-bourbon barrels and European Oak Oloroso Sherry casks, the whisky is finished for up to four months in casks soaked with a custom blend of Golen rum from three Caribbean islands. You can definitely tell. This was by far the most complex expression from the rest of the lineup.
I walked away from that Friday night tasting excited and looking forward to what the rest of the weekend would bring.
Saturday: Inside the Paddock Club
We arrived at the Miami International Autodrome around 12:30 on Saturday. Hot, humid, and already swarming with people. The crowds built as the day went on, which made the air conditioning inside the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team Paddock Club feel like a reward in itself.
The Glenfiddich Bar inside the Paddock Club was running at full speed when we arrived. The cocktail menu leaned into the 16-Year-Old collab as its anchor, with three cocktails available alongside near pours of the full range.
I started with the Speyside Spritz: Glenfiddich x Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ 16 Year Old, premium pear liqueur, lime juice, sugar, soda water. Delicious. Light and refreshing, and exactly what I wanted after the long walk from where we were dropped off by the shuttle in the parking lot to the Paddock Club.
I followed it with the Warehouse 8 Whisky Sour, same base whisky with Lemon Juice, Sugar, foam, and bitters. Very much like a traditional whisky sour, with the Glenfiddich coming through upfront on the palate in a good way.
The third option, the Glenfiddich Old Fashioned, paired the 16 Year Old with Demerara, range, and Angostura caviar, bitters.
The by-the-dram menu went from the 12 all the way up to the 21, and I used the opportunity to try the Glenfiddich 18 Year Old Small Batch for the first time. Smooth and fruit-forward, it became my favorite expression of the whole weekend. There’s a richness and depth to it that feels like a significant jump from the 16 without the intensity of the 21. If I were a daily drinker and could only buy one bottle from this lineup, the 18 would be it.
DJ Gia Fu kept the vibes going in the Paddock between announcements, interviews, and racing.
After lunch, we headed down for a pit lane walk. I got past the ropes and into the front section of the Aston Martin Garage, up close with the cars and the crew. The smell is something you don’t forget: what smelled like WD-40, hot brakes, exhaust. Some people might not love the smell of racing, but I firmly believe it needs to be made into a cologne, or at least a scented candle.
Later, we had another opportunity to go to the garage, this time guided. We entered the garage from the paddock and took a seat in a small watching booth at the back, facing out toward the crew and the track. We had heavy-duty noise-cancelling headphones on that blocked out all the noise. When the cars came in, the activity was fast and coordinated: tire changes, data shown to drivers, a hundred small things happening at once. What stuck with me wasn’t the speed of the work, though. It was watching the crew in the moments between. We couldn’t hear them over the headphones, but we didn’t need to. You could see it all: the laughing, the snack sharing, the easy back-and-forth of people who’ve spent a lot of time together under pressure. Then a car would pull in, and everything shifted in an instant. That contrast, from loose and jovial to fully locked in, was one of the more memorable things I saw all weekend.
Saturday Night: Dinner at Rao’s
Dinner was at Rao’s Miami Beach, and it came with its own Glenfiddich moment. The restaurant had put together a featured cocktail menu in partnership with the brand, leaning into the range in some interesting ways.
The Grand Prix Burns built the AMF1 16 Year Old with Carpano Antica Formula, Dom Benedictine, and
My drink through dinner was the Rao’s White Lady: Hendrick’s Another Gin, St-Germain Elderflower, and Fresh Lemon Juice. I asked them to add egg white, which made it exactly right for me. Light, balanced, and what I needed alongside a great Italian meal.
Then, as dessert arrived, the Glenfiddich team surprised the table with a pour of the Glenfiddich Suspended Time Aged 30 Years ($1,299 retail). At $275 for 1.5 oz on the menu, I was perfectly content with my cocktails and had joked about ordering the 30-year-old. Getting it as a surprise at the end of dinner was something that I won’t forget.
It’s a different category of whisky entirely. The nose is a balance of oak and sherry. The palate delivered deep but smooth floral and honey flavors. The finish was smooth, long. A thirty-year-old single malt showing up unannounced at the end of a great dinner is a hard thing to follow.
Thirty years in a barrel produces something that can’t be rushed or replicated. Christiano had walked me through the angel’s share the night before: roughly 5 to 6 percent of the liquid lost in the first year of aging, then 1 to 2 percent every year after that. Open a barrel that’s been aging for decades, and you might have a fraction of the original liquid left. That context makes the $1,299 price land differently.
Sunday: Race Day
I woke up Sunday to a lightning strike so loud it physically launched me out of bed at 7:30 am. Rain is coming down outside. The race had been moved from 4 pm to 1 pm due to incoming storms, which added urgency to the whole morning. We left for the track shortly after 9 am.
Before heading to the Glenfiddich space, we stopped at the Hendrick’s Gin activation on the campus. It was totally worth seeing. It contained an ornate white bar structure draped in green garlands, red roses, oranges, and white blooms, with performers in elaborate costumes working the crowd. One in a flowing green gown covered in roses and flowers, carrying an oversized rose clutch. Another, in an all-white suit topped with a massive gold sunburst headdress shaped like a cosmic eye. Theatrical and whimsical, and a good reminder that spirits brands at F1 are competing not just on liquid but on spectacle.
From there, we walked over to the Glenfiddich activation between turns 8 and 9, where 19-time flair bartending world champion Christian Delpech was working the bar. Watching Delpech craft a cocktail is its own kind of performance.
The Lounge cocktail menu on race day was the best of the weekend. Three originals plus a not-so-secret secret cocktail called the Racing Stag: AMF1 16 Year Old, Valdespino Sweet Vermouth, Chinatto, Verjus Blanc,
My favorite of the day was the Rich Overtake: AMF1 16 Year Old, Banane du Bresil Giffard, Kota Pandan Liquor, Lemon, Wildflower Honey, Egg White, and Nutmeg Garnish. If you’ve noticed a pattern with the egg white, you’re not wrong. It’s my fave. A slight banana note upfront, fresh throughout, with the whisky coming through cleanly underneath. On a day that was mildly warm but thick with humidity from the morning rain and the storms still threatening overhead, it perfectly lifted my spirits.
I also finally tried the Glenfiddich 15 Year Solera Cask. Smooth up front with a spicy bite at the end. You can taste and smell the sherry and bourbon cask influence clearly, with a slight sweetness in the middle. Another strong expression from a range that holds up across the board.
The race itself delivered. More than I expected. Lead changes, crashes, and the constant threat of storms hanging over every lap. Watching it from the top VIP floor of the Glenfiddich Lounge with a good drink in hand was an amazing way to experience it. And like any F1 event I’ve been to, the lounge mirrored the crowd itself. Some people there knew Formula One deeply and could tell you about the teams and drivers with enthusiasm, while others were watching their first racing and figuring out what they were seeing in real time. It was the same dynamic with the whisky. Some guests were seasoned Scotch drinkers working through the dram menu with real intention. Others were trying single malt for the first time. The VIP Lounge, with an expert mixologist and a full range of expressions on hand, turned out to be a genuinely great place to meet both groups right where they were.
The Lineup, If You Want to Explore It at Home
- Glenfiddich 12 Year Old, $44.99: The entry point. Fresh, fruity, approachable. A great place to start
- Glenfiddich 14 Year Old Bourbon Barrel Reserve, $59.99: US exclusive. Vanilla-forward, warm and sweet with a long finish.
- Glenfiddich 18 Year Old Small Batch: My personal favorite. Dried fruit, candy peel, dates. Rich without being heavy.
- Glenfiddich 21 Year Old Gran Reserva, $224.99: Rum-cask finished, complex, and a serious whisky for serious occasions.
- Glenfiddich 30 Year Old Suspended Time, $1,299: For special dinners, special people, or both. Especially if someone else is pouring.
The Bottom Line
What Glenfiddich is doing in Formula One isn’t sponsorship in the traditional sense. It’s education at scale, in a setting full of people already primed for new experiences and willing to pay for quality. The race is just where the conversation starts.
Three days in, with somewhere between eight and ten different expressions tasted across various contexts, what I came away with was a clearer picture of a brand that has been doing this since 1887 and genuinely knows what it’s doing. The range is consistent, the innovation is real, and the partnership with Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ has produced something worth paying attention to year after year.
And if you’re ever at Rao’s Miami Beach and the Glenfiddich team is at the table, stick around for dessert.
