Scotch and Scone Palace

Last Sunday, after we spent the night at the croft, we took our first tour of a whisky distillery—the Glenturret, which is in Creiff and is the oldest distillery in Scotland. It’s also the home of the Famous Grouse, which is a blended whisky. We took a tour of the distillery, and learned all about the process of making whisky (or Scotch, as we call whisky from Scotland), from how barley gets it peaty taste to how the distilled product must be kept in oak barrels for at least three years. Glenturret is aged in either old sherry casks or bourbon casks which are reused three to five times, and which give the colorless liquid its color after it sits in the barrels for years. In between batches, they char the barrels to clean them out and to give each type of whisky its distinct flavor. In addition to the tour, the distillery had a display on the different “notes” that one might be able to detect in the various whiskys and an interactive room with a few little displays that the kids especially enjoyed. At the end, they gave us samples of both the Famous Grouse and the single malt Glenturret. I was quite disappointed that, after learning all about the various ingredients that went into the whisky and the way in which one could detect notes like citrus and vanilla, it just tasted like nail polish remover to me. I did think that the single malt tasted much different from the blended whisky—though I wouldn’t say that it was good, I was at least able to tell that other people could probably recognize it as well-crafted—if that counts for anything!

In the afternoon, we drove south towards Perth and stopped at Scone Palace, which is the original home of the Stone of Destiny, or the Stone of Scone as it is sometimes called (and that’s pronounced something akin to “Skoon”, by the way…not like a tea cake…). Kings were crowned here, from Robert the Bruce in the 1300’s to Charles II in the 1650s. It was also host to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1842, and much of the tour focused on the details that the owners at the time put into the house in the two years before her visit in preparation, including the renovation of three rooms on the first floor that are now called the Queen Victoria Suite, even though she stayed in the room for only about nine hours. Another room downstairs is called the

Long Room because it’s shaped like a bowling alley, and apparently during the Queen’s visit, they decided to liven up a dull dinner party by moving out all the furniture and using the room to demonstrate the sport of curling down the length of the room! Though the palace is full of antique furniture, it’s also currently occupied by the Earl and Countess of Mansfield. Though we didn’t bump into them on the tour, we did get the chance to have a look at all their family photos, most of which were awkward teenage lads photographed on their graduation day from Eton. There were tour guides in every room who were quite interesting, and after enumerating the various collections of porcelain and crystal in the room with details about where they were made and who purchased them when, they helped John work on the “I Spy” worksheet that he had picked up at the front desk. One of them showed the kids how an antique travelling case worked, which they found fascinating, and I found impressive that they could actually understand what the guide was saying!

Though the palace is impressive, the grounds are the real draw at Scone Palace, and after exclaiming over the Chippendale chairs and the tapestry worked on by Mary Queen of Scots, we went outside to explore. There was a replica of the Stone of Scone outside the Palace, and a big adventure playground for the kids. There was also a sign that labeled a certain Douglas Fir as one the “50 most notable trees in the UK”—whatever that means. The best part of the grounds was a huge maze made of hedges in the shape of a star that was absolutely impossible to figure out. There’s even a space where you can get out of the maze and climb up on a wooden platform to survey your progress, but it’s still impossible. We split up into teams, Survivor-reward-challenge-style, and Emma tried to guide me through the maze while John guided David through from the platform (I had to hold up a Scone Palace brochure so Emma could see where I was!). At first it was a good race, but after about 20 minutes of dead ends and circling the same fountain in the center without ever getting any closer to it, I think we finally cut through the hedge at one point when we were close enough to the exit!