Scotch whiskey and country music will provide the right flavors to help turn the Nashville Whiskey Festival into a national event.

That’s the hope of Paul Patel, whose Midtown Wine & Spirits is presenting the second annual fest Sept. 11-14 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Nashville.

In addition to the change in locales – last year’s inaugural event drew 350 brown whiskey fans to the War Memorial Auditorium, according to Patel – a focus on Scotch whiskey will help infuse a spirited turnout to the event.

“We were looking for a bigger venue, and we were looking for something that was representative of Nashville internationally,” Patel says. “We wanted to grow into more of a Southeast event, be an event that is going to be around for years and eventually become a national event.”

That urge for growth was a primary reason for the move to the Mecca of country music fans, many of whom likely enjoy a taste of brown whiskey themselves.

The new location, with a capacity of 700 fans in a less-than-cramped Hall of Fame Conservatory and in the adjoining courtyards, puts the festival right next to the Music City Center, within obvious easy reach of conventioneers in Nashville, something Patel and his cohorts hope will aid in the growth.

“It’s a step toward being a national event,” says Patel, 46, who has lived in Nashville for 30 years, the last 14 as proprietor at Midtown. “We already are booked there (at the Hall of Fame) for the same time period for next year.

“We are going to make sure it’s going to be successful,” he adds, pointing out that the event sends 10 percent of ticket sales to Nashville Clean Water Project, a volunteer organization whose members clean up waterways, islands and other adjoining terrain.

“Clean water is important to whiskey,” he says. Clean Water Project volunteers will help at the event.

When Patel planned the first event last year, it was with an eye toward the state’s passion for brown whiskeys, including many major and artisan distillers from Lynchburg, Tullahoma and right here in Nashville.

“The fact that Tennessee consumes more brown goods per capita than anywhere else, it seems right to do an event like this,” he says, citing information provided by suppliers. Those same suppliers tell him the state is No. 3 nationally in overall brown whiskey consumption. “The popularity of bourbons has exploded (as have) whiskeys and artisanal producers.”

While Tennessee is famous for sipping whiskey, legal moonshine products and custom whiskeys are also a part of the local spirits scene.

But one of the most popular of brown whiskeys was not a part of the first event a year ago, and Patel and friends are not letting that happen again.

“Scotch is a very big part of whiskey and brown goods as it is,” he says. “We were going to do scotch last year, but we didn’t have enough time to include everybody. So at last year’s festival, we’d already decided we were going to include Scotch this year.”

Various scotches will be among the approximately 300 items produced by 70-75 distilleries that will be candidates for tasting during this year’s festival.

In addition to the seminars and tastings, there will be a film, “Straight Up: Tennessee Whiskey,’’ which Patel describes as a documentary about the state’s spirits history, playing in the Hall of Fame’s Ford Theater. Country music performances will be ongoing inside and outside the venue.

Beginning it all is an event right out of reality TV. Sort of. Wednesday night’s “Iron Cocktail” pits eight local whiskey-mixing experts in an “Iron Chef”-style competition.

“The events that we’ve got and the number of whiskeys and bourbons and the caliber of whiskey brand ambassadors and distilleries and master distillers coming …. Well, only New York and Chicago and San Francisco have been having events this big,” says Patel. “It’s a step toward being a national event.”