Ballantine’s Creates Immersive, Interactive Scotch Whisky Tasting Rooms
September 28, 2017 by Dave Haynes
This is a couple of years old, but the first I’ve seen of it – an interactive whisky tasting experience that blends immersive 360 projections and interactive touch screens that use optical markers on things like the bottles.
It was put together in London for Ballantine’s, a Scottish distiller focused on blended whisky.
The global interactive tasting experience looks to be built around the idea of private whisky tasting/nosing events, with groups coming in and gathered around a custom-designed digital table. A host takes guest through chapters in the Ballantine’s story, and the content is launched by placing prestige bottles and selected props on the surface.
The table runs off MultiTaction’s hardware and interactive software platform. The bottles and objects have the Finnish company’s Codice optical markers on them, which are a bit like QR codes and trigger content using object recognition algorithms.
The table is centered in a darkened room that has 360° wall projections and virtually takes people to northeast Scotland and Speyside, where the malts, grains and waters are put together to make Ballantine’s (and a lot of top single malts).
The PR and video don’t provide a lot of detail, but I am told there are versions in emerging whisky-selling markets like Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam
Here is a coffee version of the table.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5HZboPhLwVhTlg1YzBPSFhVUFk
Attendees order their coffee, and watch content triggered by paper cup.