The Speyside region. A region not really designated by natural boundaries, or clan ownership claims, but roughly defined by having access to the water coming from or flowing into the river Spey. Home to roughly 50 distilleries in the mid-east of the Highlands between Inverness and Aberdeen, hugging the North Sea coast. In the triangle…
Category: speyside
Entering Speyside
“Falling Down a Mountain” turns out to be a cafe with coffee brewed from freshly ground beans and the best homemade carrot cake we have had on this trip. Well worth the one mile detour before turning our heels and driving the mile back on General Wade’s Military Road to cross the river Spey for…
Everything, everywhere All at Once
Okay. Slow down a bit. We were now only a couple of days on the Island and had to force ourselves not to do everything, everywhere all at once*, and deliberately tried to stay on the North end of Islay, with the smallest of the Bowmore Cottages as our place of rest and the most…
LEG TWO OF THREE
Because three weeks of touring through Scotland is quite a bit to digest in one read, we decided to gather our notes and split the trip in three more edible parts. Mind you, this second part is just a resume of what we have been doing and all distillery visits will be getting their own…
LEG ONE OF THREE
Because three weeks of touring through Scotland is quite a bit to digest in one read, we decided to gather our notes and split the trip in three more edible parts. Mind you, this first part is just a resume of what we have been doing and all distillery visits will be getting their own…
BenRiach Triple Distilled
During last weeks’ Spirit of Speyside festival, we were invited by the BenRiach’s Global Brand Ambassador Stewart Buchanan to join him in a tasting of their newly released triple distilled expression. In one of the distillery offices, a table was lushly filled with a selection of cheese, fruit and charcuterie, plus five mystery drams. Starting…
Little Black Hill – Knockando Distillery
During the heydays of the Scottish Whisky industry in the end of the nineteenth century, dreamer, gambler and entrepreneur John Tytler Thompson decided to build a new distillery on the banks of the river Spey. He commissioned acclaimed architect and engineer Charles Doig to build him a modern distillery, the first Speyside distillery to be…
The Can-Dhu-Spirit
On many occasions in the last few years, we have shared our stories traveling through the Speyside region with its omnipresent distilleries. It seems that every week, another of the existing ones are opening their doors to the public, create visitors’ centres and install good kitchens and lunchrooms to attract many visitors to the distillery…
The Land Between Two Rivers – The Edradour Distillery
It doesn’t seem to matter if the weather is dreach or the sun is out on its highest peak, the Edradour distillery seems to attract busloads of people every day during the season. Not so strange really, if you take a look at the tiny bridges over the rushing cooling water of the Edradour burn,…
The indistinct shed – a look at the Kininvie distillery
Following a very successful Spirit of Speyside Festival in 2016, we were given the opportunity to visit the fairly unknown Kininvie still house, little more than an indistinct shed tucked away in the woods between the Glenfiddich and Balvenie distilleries, with a strong attraction to WhiskySpeller for the past few years. A Little History After…
WhiskySpeller – News Update
A lot has happened since our last update at the beginning of November. Next to the stories we usually share about our trips and distillery visits, we have added book reviews to our revamped site and started sharing tasting notes on a daily basis from the Drinks by the Dram Advent Calendars. On top of…
The Oyster Catcher – Inchgower Distillery
At the end of April 2016, during the Spirit of Speyside festival, a cold freezing wind and a watery pale sun remembered us we were closer to winter than we were to summer. We enjoyed a good sturdy home made breakfast in our rented cottage in Cullen, cleared the car of the night frost and…
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