Eight days of rock,
malt and roar.
Deeside to the west coast with twelve people, built around old rock, one distillery that still does everything itself, and three weeks when the hill is loud.
Quoted per group. Rooms, guides and private hours vary.
Twelve places. The private list hears first.
The last week of September is the week the midges go and the stags start — both calendar facts rather than opinions.
The midge season closes with the first cold nights, and the red deer rut runs from late September through October. Two bases in eight days — four nights at Braemar inside the Cairngorms, three at the head of a sea loch in Torridon — and a crossing between them that takes most of a day, because Scotland is wider than it looks.
Balvenie ran its first distillation in 1893 and is the last distillery in Scotland that still grows its own barley, turns it on its own malting floor, and employs its own cooper and its own coppersmith. You will see all four, in that order, on the same morning.
Braemar
deeside & the plateau
Up Royal Deeside from Aberdeen, along the river and past Balmoral. The Fife Arms reopened in 2018 under the owners of Hauser & Wirth, with forty-six rooms and something over twelve thousand objects on the walls — a hotel that is also a collection.
Base — The Fife Arms, Braemar
Speyside
barley, copper & the roar
North over the hill into Speyside for the day that justifies the whisky in the description. Back for the second evening in the glen, out at dusk, when the stags are audible long before they are visible.
Base — the same hotel, four nights in all
Torridon
old rock & sea loch
West across the country to where the hills run straight down into salt water. The Torridon was built as a shooting lodge in 1887 for the first Earl of Lovelace — Ada Lovelace’s husband — and keeps three hundred and sixty-five malts in what used to be the dairy.
Base — The Torridon, at the head of the loch, three nights
The last week of September, for two reasons that are dates rather than opinions: the midge season closes with the first cold nights, and the rut runs from late September through October.
One distillery, not five. Balvenie is the last in Scotland doing the whole thing itself, and a morning there explains more than a week of tasting rooms.
The Thursday hill is chosen on the day, not in advance. Beinn Alligin or Liathach depends on what the cloud is doing that morning.
Tell us who is travelling, and we will write back.
Price on enquiry. Every week is quoted for the group that takes it — rooms, the guides, and how much of it is private. We answer within two working days, by letter or by telephone.