After a lovely evening overnight in Fort Augustus we had to make our way back to Aberdeen for our flight. We knew we had to make at least one more Scotch Distillery tour so we planned our route through the Speyside region. A few days back we drove past the idyllic Glenlivet Distillery and it was on this we set our sights. We passed back up through along the west side of the Loch and of course did a few select caches. It was again another beautifully clear day and made the loch drive all the more memorable. We passed through Inverness, picked up a teacup and dish, and made tracks for the winding roads of the Speyside and Cairngorms. We truly loved driving through this area. You can tell it has fallen victim to heavy logging over the decades due to the abrupt line of dense forest against barren hill face. We passed through a tiny valley with a single house sitting in the corner of two pine forest covered hills. There were two kids playing in the backyard of this house with the pine forest covered hills starting not more than 50 feet away. A perfect playground. Not far away from Glenlivet we saw a sign for a 15th century castle and we were obliged to stop. It turns out this castle is on the Glenlivet smugglers trail. Yes, the trail is a smugglers trail, for smuggling scotch whiskey specifically. The castle is called Drumin Castle and was owned by Alexander Stewart, the “Wolf of Badenoch.” We noticed how the immediate area was easily defendable- situated in a remote valley on a steep but short hill and surrounded by two rivers. Historians think there were fortifications there since the Iron Age, but The Wolf’s son built the current crumbling castle in the 1400s.
Only 5 minutes away was the Glenlivet Distillery and we of course took the tour. Before the tour we tried some of the Glenlivet infused vanilla ice cream; very delicious with sweet bits of malted barley and perfect for a milkshake. Glenlivet’s tour and facility is more polished than Cardhu and unlike Cardhu, the tour covered a lot about the smuggling of whiskey throughout Scotland in the 1800’s. Glenlivet Distillery was perfectly situated in the remotest part of the Cairgorms, especially in the winter, so it was easy to distill without law enforcement intervening. Glenlivet took its name from the river that supplied the water for the distillery, the Livet. We got out of the tour at 5pm and we only had 3 hours left till our flight and we were a ways away from Aberdeen. Leaving this part of Scotland behind, we hoped we would be back and for much longer.
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