The Financial Times, 2 April 2004

In the cosy bar of the Craigellachie Hotel in Scotland’s Speyside, the barman is having trouble pouring a dram of whisky. The bar is lined with 500 different bottles: he can’t remember where he left the one he wants. Welcome to Whisky Country.
The hotel is slightly fusty - cigar smoke, chintz and an open fire for every guest - but understated and welcoming too. There’s no spa or Molton Brown products; no polished wellies artfully scattered by the front door - and I rather like that. Instead they serve up traditional Scottish meals - haggis, beef, smoked salmon - that make the mouth water and the waistline wince, and then offer dogs to dog-less couples who need an excuse to get out and walk off breakfast along the Speyside Way.

Outside, the road signs read like bar menus - Glenfiddich, Glenlivet - and the air is rich with the sweet whisky vapour that rises from the area’s numerous distilleries. But it’s the Rolls-Royce of whisky that we’re here to nose and taste: The Macallan.

Up on an isolated bluff overlooking the river Spey and Thomas Telford’s celebrated iron bridge, sits Easter Elchies House. Here, the relatively simple process of distillation has been refined to an art-form. Expensive oak casks seasoned with sherry are brought in from Jerez, Spain; only special locally grown Golden Promise barley and natural local spring water is used.

The result is a range of beautiful single malts and, for the true connoisseur, a rare selection with a whisky for every year back to 1926 (a bottle of which, complete with Peter Blake-designed label, will set you back about £20,000). Citrus, peat, toffee, apple, dried fruits - each scent swims out of the glass. We taste a peaty 1946 (£2,250 a bottle) and a delicious, dark 1954 Macallan (a steal at £1,675 a bottle).

After such an introduction, our choice of dram at the hotel bar - with its 500 bottles - just became more difficult.