The Gordon family spent the better part of a century quietly building one of the deepest reserves of aged Scotch anywhere in the world. You can now drink your way through more of it at a single Highland hotel than at any bar or restaurant on earth.
House of Hazelwood, the private cask library behind William Grant & Sons, has partnered with the Fife Arms in Braemar and its Bertie’s Whisky Bar to build a bespoke tasting experience through the Cairngorms. Guests choose from seven rare House of Hazelwood expressions, several of them past the half-century mark, and taste them not only in the bar but out in the landscape: Caledonian pine forest, private estates, the banks of the River Dee, and viewpoints over the mountains.
According to House of Hazelwood, it is the largest selection of its whiskies available in any bar or restaurant in the world. That is a meaningful claim for a house that normally sells direct to buyers rather than through venues, and whose bottles rarely appear on a back bar at all.
What is in the experience
The line-up spans more than five decades of maturation. Four expressions have been named so far, with three more in the seven-strong selection not yet disclosed.
The named drams are Blended at Birth, a 1965 vintage blended Scotch; The Pursuit of Pleasure, a 52-year-old blended Scotch; The Old Ways, a 1972 vintage single grain; and The Garden at Hazelwood, a 47-year-old blended malt poured in the hotel’s gardens.
The through-line is age and provenance rather than a single region or style. These are whiskies drawn from stock the family laid down decades ago, much of it under Charles Gordon, who built the Girvan grain distillery in the 1960s and set aside casks that were never intended for a standard release.
Who House of Hazelwood actually is
House of Hazelwood is not a distillery. It is the Gordon family’s private collection, opened to the public in 2022 after roughly a century of quietly accumulating casks.
The family owns William Grant & Sons, the company behind Glenfiddich and Balvenie and still entirely in family hands. The Hazelwood name comes from the family home in Dufftown, the lifetime residence of Janet Sheed Roberts, a Grant family member who lived to 110. The bottlings tend to sit between 35 and 60-plus years old, and the pricing reflects that: this is some of the oldest aged Scotch on the market.
Because House of Hazelwood works largely direct-to-buyer, tasting seven of these side by side in one place is genuinely unusual. For most drinkers it is the difference between reading about whiskies at this age and putting them on the palate.
Why the Fife Arms and Bertie’s
The Fife Arms is a five-star hotel in Braemar, inside the Cairngorms National Park, in a Victorian coaching inn that reopened in December 2018 under Iwan and Manuela Wirth of the Hauser & Wirth art world. Bertie’s Whisky Bar opened in 2021, named after King Edward VII, and holds around 500 whiskies arranged not by region but by flavour: Fragrant, Fruity, Rich and Smoky.
Bertie’s already runs its whiskies out into the hills. The bar’s own format sends guests on a guided excursion led by a whisky expert, tasting rare drams from the library before returning for a final pour in the bar itself, tailored to each guest’s taste. The House of Hazelwood collection slots straight into that structure, which is why the pairing works: the venue was built for this kind of thing.
Price, booking and getting there
The experience is bespoke and arranged by enquiry through the Fife Arms events team rather than sold as a fixed ticket, so the House of Hazelwood tasting is priced on request. For reference, Bertie’s standard four-dram flight runs at £150 per person, and the House of Hazelwood drams, given their age, sit well above that.
Braemar is remote by design. It is roughly two and a half hours north of Edinburgh by road, deep in the Cairngorms, so this is a destination rather than a drop-in. For international readers, that is part of the point: the whisky and the landscape are meant to be experienced together, and the setting is doing as much work as the liquid.
Bookings and enquiries go through the Fife Arms directly.
Frequently asked questions
What is House of Hazelwood? House of Hazelwood is the private Scotch whisky collection of the Gordon family, owners of William Grant & Sons. Opened to the public in 2022, it bottles rare, aged whiskies from the family’s cask library, typically 35 to 60-plus years old, and usually sells direct to buyers rather than through shops.
What whiskies are in the Fife Arms experience? Guests choose from seven rare House of Hazelwood expressions. Four are named: Blended at Birth (1965 vintage blended Scotch), The Pursuit of Pleasure (52-year-old blended Scotch), The Old Ways (1972 vintage single grain), and The Garden at Hazelwood (47-year-old blended malt). Three further expressions complete the selection.
How much does the House of Hazelwood experience cost? The experience is bespoke and priced on request through the Fife Arms events team. As a reference point, Bertie’s standard four-dram flight is £150 per person, and the House of Hazelwood drams, given their age, sit above that. Contact the hotel directly for a quote.
Where is the Fife Arms and how do I get there? The Fife Arms is a five-star hotel in Braemar, inside the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands. It is roughly two and a half hours north of Edinburgh by road. Bertie’s Whisky Bar, where the experience is based, holds around 500 whiskies arranged by flavour profile.
Is this really the largest House of Hazelwood collection in any bar? House of Hazelwood states this is the largest selection of its whiskies available in any bar or restaurant worldwide. Because the house normally sells direct to buyers rather than to venues, seven of its rare expressions in one place is unusual, which is what makes the claim notable.
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