The Scotch Whisky Experience Edinburgh: what it is, and what the ticket buys

Castlehill is the short, steep stretch of the Royal Mile immediately below the castle esplanade, and it is one of the most-walked hundred metres in Scotland. The building at number 354 was a school in the Victorian period; it opened as a whisky attraction on the fifth of May 1988 and has been running ever since.

That date matters more than it looks. In 1988 Scotch whisky tourism as we now understand it barely existed — most distilleries did not take visitors, and the idea that somebody would pay to be taught to taste was novel. The Experience was among the first places anywhere to treat the subject as something worth explaining rather than simply selling.

The original attraction ran a dark ride with thirteen theatrical sets covering three hundred years of whisky history, in vehicles shaped like barrels. Generations of visitors remember the barrel ride specifically, and it is worth knowing before you book that the tour has been through several redevelopments since.

The last stop is the reason this place is photographed more than any other whisky site in Britain. It is a vault lined floor to ceiling with sealed bottles — 3,384 of them, no two the same.

They were assembled over thirty-five years by Claive Vidiz, a Brazilian collector, and it is the largest collection of Scotch whisky in the world. Diageo acquired it and brought it to Edinburgh, and it went on public display in May 2009. Every bottle is unopened, and the collection is displayed as one object rather than as a series of exhibits.

Standing in it is genuinely striking, and it does something the rest of the tour cannot: it gives you the scale of the industry in a single glance. Five regions and a hundred and forty or so working distilleries is an abstraction until you are looking at three and a half thousand different bottles at once.

It is at the very top of the Royal Mile, immediately below the castle esplanade. From Waverley station it is about a fifteen-minute walk and all of it is uphill; from the castle it is thirty seconds. There is no parking and you do not want to be driving anyway.

The best slot is mid to late afternoon. Morning tastings on an empty stomach are a waste of the ticket, and the last slots of the day leave you at the top of the Old Town with the whole hill downhill from you and the evening ahead — which is the right way round.

Book ahead in August without exception. In the quiet months you can often walk up, but free cancellation to twenty-four hours means holding a slot costs nothing at any time of year.

Castlehill is the short, very steep top section of the Royal Mile, running from the castle esplanade down towards the Lawnmarket. It is barely a hundred and fifty metres long and it is one of the most walked stretches of pavement in Scotland.

Almost everything on it is a visitor business, which is easy to sneer at until you notice how old that arrangement is. This has been the ceremonial approach to the castle for centuries; people have been selling things to arriving visitors here since long before anybody used the word tourism.

The practical consequence for your afternoon is geography. Finishing a tasting at the top of the hill leaves the whole Old Town below you: the Lawnmarket, the closes, St Giles, the Grassmarket down to the left. Finishing at the bottom leaves you facing a climb. Book the later slot and walk downhill afterwards — it is a small thing that makes the evening noticeably better.