Part of a £185 million (US$235 million) investment by Diageo to update its contribution to Scotch whisky tourism (along with a revamp of Glenkinchie Distillery, in the Lowlands, and the Singleton Distillery, up north), it’s a blast, even for those who aren’t particularly fond of whisky, like my father and me.

We roll out onto Princes Street somewhat inebriated following the three shots of Red Label included in our 90-minute tour, topped up with a couple of cocktails at the rooftop bar, 1820, which is decorated with oil paintings of Edinburgh Castle and the Kingdom of Fife.

Happily, we are within staggering distance of the first hotel on our grand tour of Scotland’s latest luxury accommodation.

Gleneagles Townhouse opened in Edinburgh’s 300-year-old New Town in 2022. The building now occupied by the sister hotel of the famous golfing resort is a Georgian pile overlooking St Andrew Square that housed the Bank of Scotland for more than 200 years. Now it’s a bodice ripper of a boutique abode, with 33 pastel-coloured rooms.

“We are luxury, but we are also fun,” says general manager Willem van Emden, who used to work for Swire Hotels in Hong Kong.

A few areas of the hotel are reserved for guests and private members, including the intimate rooftop bar, Lamplighters, where we watch the Scottish sky unexpectedly flame in a shade of red more commonly seen in the Caribbean.

Non-members are welcome to dine in all-day restaurant The Spence – if they can get a table. It’s a palatial space, set under an enormous glass-cut cupola surrounded by gold-topped columns and cameos of serious-looking Scottish luminaries – Walter Scott, Adam Smith, James Watt – where affable waiters deliver heaped plates of Scottish West Coast langoustines, Argyle rock oysters and ruby slabs of venison.

Although Scotland’s most famous golfing resort isn’t new (it’s been around for almost a century), the sprawling estate has perfected the Scottish luxury travel experience, with capacious rooms overlooking manicured gardens, a Michelin-star restaurant and enough activities to keep even the most energetic busy for weeks.

With only an afternoon to spare, we spend time in the falconry, getting hands on with a pair of peregrine falcons – the fastest animals on Earth, capable of reaching speeds of 386km/h (240mph).

Unlike the beautiful birds of prey, we are in no rush the following morning. Fuelled up on a breakfast of Scott’s porridge oats topped with Drambuie-soaked raspberries, we take a leisurely drive northeast towards Glenmorangie House, in the tiny, windswept coastal village of Fearn by Tain.

The A9 road leads us upcountry, through Killiecrankie, an Outlander-worthy wooded gorge where one of the great battles of the 1689 Jacobite rising took place, and Carrbridge, home to both the oldest stone bridge (built in 1717) in the Highlands and the World Porridge Championship, a uniquely Scottish boast.

While most visitors choose to travel to Scotland in the summer (in the hope of dodging some of its 250 days of rain each year), it is autumn that steals my heart.

As we head north, the sun shines softly and the landscape rolls by like an old sepia film reel; mountains, Munros – as peaks 3,000ft (914 metres) and over are known – and valleys of amber, fawn and orange; rivers of molten bronze; forests of silver birch that look like trays of puffy baked scones. Leaves line the roads like golden confetti.

Gaggles of black-necked barnacle geese fly in formation overhead. At the Moray Firth, the mountains curve into the North Sea like giant water slides. The last leg of our journey takes us along a single-track road lined with wheat and barley fields dotted with fat, round sheep and jewel-coloured pheasants.

The Scottish scenery has more than delivered – but what we were not expecting to see in this far-flung corner of the Highlands is a five-metre-tall giraffe.

“Glenmorangie’s stills are the same height as a fully grown African giraffe,” answers local lass and front-of-house assistant Amy Louise McAngus, to a question that she must hear often.

Guarding the entrance, the bronze animal links Glenmorangie House to the distillery of the same name, which is, in fact, 16km (9 miles) away, and offers the first clue that there is more to this boutique hotel than its muted 17th century Presbyterian exterior suggests.

The Russell Sage-designed interior resembles an explosion in a paint factory; turquoise walls, green doors, stripy carpets, shimmering gold ceilings, mismatched florals and tasselled lampshades clashing in a triumph of colour.

There’s a playfulness to Glenmorangie House’s activities: sensory whisky tastings involving blindfolds and marmalade; mini-Highland Games in the walled garden; singsongs around the Wilhelm piano. And there is a seriousness to the quality of the food, from crumbly spiced black pudding and just-laid eggs for breakfast, to Orkney scallops for lunch, and prime cuts of Highland beef with a single-cask 8664 jus for dinner.

We leave our colourful eyrie on the cliffs above the dolphin-studded Moray Firth through undulating scenery on a drive south which culminates in the SnowRoads Scenic Route.

Overshadowed by the now well-worn North Coast 500, the 145km SnowRoads runs from the Victorian sandstone mansions of Grantown-on-Spey through wild, wondrous corners of the Cairngorms National Park to the market town of Blairgowrie – and features far less traffic than its rival, an 830km circuit of Scotland’s far north.

Ancient pine forests dating back to 7000BC mark our arrival at Braemar and our final stop, The Fife Arms.

Opened by Swiss art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth in 2018, the grand granite hunting lodge bordering the royal Balmoral Estate is Scotland’s most talked about hotel, thanks to its wonderfully OTT interiors (also designed by Sage) and astonishing art collection.

The crowd, sporting Barbours and £1,000-a-pop Fair Isle jumpers, bring their dogs along on their private jets to take advantage of the area’s outdoor activities, from picnics with teeny-tiny Shetland ponies to dark sky gazing in search of the Northern Lights to foraging for lunch, fly fishing and bracing walks across the Royal Deeside estate.

The Fife Arms hits all the right notes, whatever the weather, while never taking itself too seriously, much like Scotland itself.

Lee Cobaj was a guest of VisitScotland, Gleneagles, Glenmorangie House and The Fife Arms.