If you’re a fan of fine scotch you ought to know Piers Adam. Although an Englishman by birth, his heart and soul belong to the Speyside of Scotland.
You’re a Londoner with a pedigree tied to some of the city’s best nightclubs. What brought you to rural Scotland?I’m a seventh generation Londoner from my mother’s side. But my father’s parents immigrated from Glasgow after the first world war to London to find work. As a child I had never been to Scotland—I naively wanted to follow the sun and Mediterranean party scene. However, during World War II my father was evacuated from the bombing back to stay with relatives in Scotland.
former Soviet countries. Parliamentarians from several former Soviet republics were locked in talks in Scotland today to try to resolve a decade-long regional conflict with delegations from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia arriving in Moray in the Highlands last night for two days of negotiations. Up to that point in my clubs I didn’t sell scotch. I was slightly intimidated by the category but when I met a master blender at the Craigellachie, I asked him how one should drink, one’s whiskey.
It was very difficult at the time for banks to lend money on hotels because it was the height of the recession—and even more so to try and raise finance on a hotel in the middle of rural Scotland. So I mortgaged everything to acquire it in 2014. We then had to completely renovate it as it had been unloved for decades. We wanted to create something that was less of a bed and breakfast but more like somebody’s country house. Ralph Lauren is my hero and creates a lifestyle brand.