A travel day for us, heading back to the States after an incredible 17 days revisiting and exploring Scotland. We’re in Edinburgh, but need to head back to drop off our car rental, and catch a flight from Glasgow Airport.
A few hours and a super sketchy Uber ride later… we arrived at The Vaults (another Scotch Malt Whisky Society location, this time in Leith).
Back outside, mingling with the Muggles.
Our tickets included a bottle of wine and some popcorn to share.
The movie we saw was The Roses (I didn’t quite remember that it was a remake, until after we got back in the States).
A big travel day for us, leaving Speyside and trekking to Edinburgh for our last city and stay, before heading home.
Our big event for the day wasn’t until later on: a tasting a one of our favorite distilleries, Glendronach.
Dram 1: 39 Year Caol Ila (filled 1984 in a Refill American Hogshead, bottled in 2023).
Dram 2: 29 Year Glentauchers (filled 1995 in a First Fill Sherry Butt, bottled in 2024).
Dram 3: 26 Year Dailuaine (filled 1998 in a REfill American Hogshead, bottled in 2024)
Dram 4: 23 Year Macallan (filled 2001, bottled in 2024)
Dram 5: 17 Year Linkwood (filled 2008 in a First Fill Sherry Hogshead, bottled in 2025).
We got what felt like a very behind the scenes look at the whole process. Of particular note – Glen Garioch only recently returned to floor malting (some more background) – a very manual and labor/time-intensive process.
The smell of the malt was quite incredible – and I really wish I could have taken some photos to share. But I guess you’ll have to go on the tour yourself, if you want to see it.
Travel day! We left Portree, packed all our things in the car, and are headed to Speyside.
Liz and I started to take shorter and shorter distances. The heights were getting to us, but we felt confident and strong. So we’d pause, gather ourselves, and then decide to go up “a little further,” picking some visual marker.
And then we’d repeat that a few times, and get higher and higher.
A really cool thing about Torabhaig – they made it a point to hire locals to work at the distillery. And more than that, also made it a point to hire folks who may not have been directly involved in the whisky industry.
Of particular interest, they have a Journeyman’s Series: a program where they set aside one month each year for their distillers to have free reign of the distillery, to work on their own custom recipes.
This looks to be just like a Renaissance painting (if it weren’t for that bit of blue spray paint, dotting the sheep’s butt in the foreground).
A lovely view from Portree (this is a row of houses, on a lower street – not actually of the downtown area).
Travel day today – we’re on the road for just about 3 hours (125 miles), going from Glencoe to Portree (Isle of Skye). A lot of it was highway driving, A82 – A87.
Back around Glencoe Valley, we were exploring a few different spots. Liz had a place in mind, and was trying to track it down.
We eventually found it: the Meeting of Three Waters. There wasn’t a ton of easy parking, but we found some spots, hopped a small fence, and hiked our way up to several small pools/rivers.