Day 17 - Alvie

Accommodation – Alvie Estate

Weather – overcast with some sunshine around lunch time

Temperature – 15 degrees

This morning we had a later start as it was nice not to have to get up, go to the B&B breakfast and pack up and move on.  The day was much brighter after our wet arrival yesterday afternoon.

Our little cottage for a week on Alvie Estate.  It's one hundred years old and was one of the worker cottages

Our Australian friends who are sharing our cabin weren’t arriving until later in the afternoon and we had nothing planned.  A call from the rest of the party in the other house suggested a visit to a local distillery so it was a good way to see the countryside to the south and learn something about whiskey at the same time.

A tour, a tasting and a chocolate! 

Dalwhinnie Distillery is the highest distillery in Scotland set in the windswept Grampian Mountains.  Our guide told us that there are only four weeks of the year that the mountains do not have some snow cover.  At present there is still some snow on the mountains.  My immediate thought was:  why do people live here?

The tour took us from the barley roasting (smoked with peat) to the finished product of the 15 year old single malt.  I’m not a fan of Scotch however the accompanying small chocolate was beautiful and I got to keep the little glass.  I learned that there is no such thing as a double malt – there are only single malts and blends.   Dalwhinnie scotch is a medium range scotch with the western coast products being much stronger.  The kegs are left untouched for 15 or more years, one is tested for quality and then the bottles are filled.  If the kegs are left longer there is more evaporation, the quality is better and the cost is higher.

By the time the tour had finished it was already mid -afternoon so we had a bit of a rest time before joining the other ten in our group for pre-dinner drinks.  One of the group had a birthday so we toasted with some Veuve Clicquot and sat around the fire place while the rain came down outside.  Our friends arrived in time from Edinburgh to catch up with drinks and meet up with everyone.

Afternoon views from our cottage, 'Wester Delfour".

Some of the men went off trout fishing in the inclement conditions and making the most of the late light conditions but we decided to have pork sausage sandwiches with relish, sit around our fire in the cabin and watch the final of the Commonwealth Games.

It was a lovely start to our week at Alvie Estate.