The Fife Arms hotel, in the village of Braemar, was formerly a Victorian coaching inn.Fife Arms
I arrived at the whisky tasting unconvinced. I’d attended the odd Robert Burns supper before, an evening to raise a toast and celebrate Scotland’s beloved poet on his Jan. 25 birthday. Once I even hosted a tasting for 60 neighbours – bagpipe player included – yet I still couldn’t see what all the reverence was about. Whisky always seemed to demand a certain seriousness, an assumption of expertise, not to mention what I would generously call an acquired taste.
But I had to give the drink another shot (or should I say dram) when I was travelling in the Scottish Highlands last fall. I knew it would only be one small part of my adventure; I didn’t know it would inform my experiences both indoors and out.
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Two hours by car north of Edinburgh, the road thins and the land opens out into the Cairngorms National Park (Britain’s largest), all heathered hills, pastures of sheep and cattle under almost theatrical light. In the village of Braemar, the Fife Arms hotel sits centrally without pomp. Its quiet stately front doesn’t signal its former role as a Victorian coaching inn, its current status as a five-star hotel or its exquisitely eccentric self.
Heathered hills surround the famed hotel in the Scottish highlands.Fife Arms Hotel/Supplied
As the door closed behind our small group at Bertie’s Whisky Bar, tucked deep inside the hotel, our guide, Tom Addy, began to speak. In the dimly lit room, roughly 400 bottles lined the shelves, organized not by age, distillery or region, but by flavour. We tasted our way through four loose groupings – fragrant, fruity, rich, smoky – while Addy threaded stories through the basics of blends and single malts (whisky was once declared medicinal to skirt Prohibition; the world of casks has a surprisingly fascinating evolution).
At the end, he introduced us to some of the world’s oldest whisky, explaining how 40 bottles distilled in 1843 were discovered in a nearby castle cellar. We were invited to smell the contents, but not taste. After all, this is a batch that Queen Victoria might have enjoyed.
Hundreds of bottles line the walls of Bertie’s Whisky Bar.Fife Arms
At this point, Addy, a furniture maker by trade, noticed he’d gone past the allotted time. He apologized and added, almost as an aside, that he doesn’t actually drink much whisky. He just likes the stories.
Sitting there glass in hand, it became clear to me this wasn’t just a tasting but an introduction to a way of paying attention. As surprisingly enjoyable as the whisky turned out to be, that mattered less than how the spirit was framed. Call it curiosity over connoisseurship, story over status: At the Fife Arms, anything beyond a glance is rewarded with substance, style and no small sense of wonder.
Reimagined as a kind of inhabited gallery, the hotel offers 46 individually designed rooms and suites and more than 16,000 works of art. Yes, 16,000. On the ground floor alone hang two Picassos in common rooms. The cocktail bar has a Man Ray, while a 19th-century fireplace carved to honour poems by Robert Burns is tucked into a lobby alcove.
Before any reverence has a chance to settle, however, a playfulness intrudes. Take, for instance, the painted palm tree and parrot climbing a wall in the guest room commemorating Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island in the village, or a headboard of 20 violins fanned out in the room celebrating Highland music and dance. If you visit the fire room, a private dining room designed to mimic a Highland cottage, you’ll encounter a massive and spectacular chandelier of cooking vessels among colourful lights by a contemporary Indian artist. Turn a corner and greet an entire wall of taxidermy that inexplicably includes an ostrich.
One morning, meandering an upstairs hallway, I came face to face with what appeared to be a wax figure of Queen Victoria seated in a chair. When I later learned that a framed pair of her stockings hangs in the room named for her, I almost asked, is Wes Anderson Scottish?
Of course, Victoria’s presence here is no accident. After she and her husband, Prince Albert, bought Balmoral Castle, it became fashionable to escape the coal-smoke-choked cities for the Highlands – a landscape she genuinely adored. She first attended the Braemar Gathering Highland Games in 1848, a tradition the royals have continued regularly ever since.
Balmoral is just down the road from the Fife Arms. And the royal connection is not just historical. King Charles III, who reopened the Fife Arms in 2019 after its renovation, happened to be at the family castle while I was visiting. My closest encounter was seeing a trio of his landscapes in a hallway off the lobby.
Balmoral Castle is close to the Fife Arms. King Charles III reopened the hotel in 2019 after its renovation.Fife Arms
Near the guest book at the hotel entrance hangs an 1874 sketch by Victoria of a stag’s head shot by John Brown, her trusted gillie – not a servant, but a uniquely Highland role: guide, protector and interpreter of the land. The Fife Arms still employs gillies today. They have their own desk in reception and are available to lead guests into the hills for stalking, hunting, fishing and other long outings shaped by weather, terrain and tradition.
One early morning, I watched a clean pair of antlers being handed quietly to a guest who had shot the animal the night before. They had been prepared overnight so he could take them home.
Guests are encouraged to forage, wild swim, stalk deer, fish and sketch. I booked what I thought was a foraging excursion and only later discovered it was, in fact, a morning of outdoor sketching with Mel Shand, a local artist. Mortified, I admitted I can’t even draw a stick figure. She smiled and suggested we go for a drive to see whether inspiration would strike.
A ceiling fresco in the hotel’s drawing room.Fife Arms
We set out across the countryside, stopping often. It was mating season, and we paused on a hilltop to listen for the rutting stags below. My city ears perked up excitedly at what turned out to be a motorcycle.
As we roamed, Shand talked not about drawing, but about trees, specifically the million being planted along the Dee river systems to protect the salmon from rising water temperatures. Even walking across an ancient stone bridge by a small gorge was a chance to look anew and learn where trees can grow, how water moves and shapes its surroundings, and in turn how the ecosystem develops. Suddenly the agate-inspired ceiling fresco in the hotel’s drawing room made sense, both in how we can look at the natural world as art and how our surroundings inhabit us.
By the end of my visit, nothing felt decorative or incidental. Whisky, art, land and wildlife seem to follow the same rule: Pay attention and they reveal themselves.
If you go
The Fife Arms is in Braemar, Scotland, about a two-hour drive from Edinburgh. It holds two Michelin keys (the hotel version of Michelin stars). Single occupancy rates start at £330 ($615), while double‑occupancy rooms begin at £650 ($1,210).
The village of Braemar is easy to walk. It has a few shops, including antique stores and an ice cream parlour. There are several easy-to-follow trails around the area and a couple of hikes deemed strenuous for a view.
Only a 15-minute walk from the hotel is Braemar Castle, built in 1628. Knowledgeable and charming volunteers welcome visitors with all sorts of local history and hint at ghosts as you buy a ticket for a self-guided tour.
In the larger village of Ballater (just past Balmoral) enjoy a meal at the Fish Shop, a Bib Gourmand restaurant serving fresh Scottish seafood.
The writer was a guest of the Fife Arms. It did not review or approve the story before publication.
