This is not only a pretty distillery in an attractive setting; it has facilities to produce spirit in a novel two-unit manner which enabled the Victorian buildings to be retained. The pagoda head is still there, the little dam that is both ornamental and functional lies alongside and the spot is surrounded by mature woodland.

The distillery was built in 1821 by Peter Brown, the factor of the Seafield estates of Moray and Banffshire, and is named after Linkwood House, the family home. Brown’s son, William, carried on the business and rebuilt the distillery in the 1870s. Directors of Teaninich and Scapa distilleries were involved at different times in the running of Linkwood. One of the managers in the 1930s believed that absolutely everything in the distillery played its part in making the whisky what it was and he commanded that nothing – not even a cobweb – be removed. Had he lived long enough, he would have been dismayed in 1962 when the internal layout was radically changed and again in 1971 when a second distilling unit with two pairs of stills was built alongside the original Linkwood single-pair set-up.

Glen Grant had also opened another ‘branch’ across the road at Rothes but found that the spirit produced was so different that the new unit had to be registered as a completely separate distillery and given a different name, Caperdonich. It is perhaps academic now since the old site at Linkwood has been silent since 1985.

Linkwood is light, sweet and gently smoky, but also carries a lovely quiet complexity. There is considerable fruit presence too with a spicy-apple tang. The distillery whisky is 12 years old at 43% vol. but it is a whisky that is particularly cherished by cognoscenti and the private bottlers offer a plethora of alternatives. Try the 14-, 15- and 21-year-olds; available vintages go back as far as 1939.