I'm hiking up a whisky smugglers' trail in the Scottish Highlands on a day alternating between moody fog patches and misty rain when I wonder if I'm walking up a streambed rather than a trail. The flowing water is tinted golden brown from the peaty soil, and it looks like an overflow of nature's own whisky rushing downward. Here, every raindrop and puddle could wind up as uisge beatha, whisky's Gaelic name, meaning "water of life." Half of Scotland's 97 distilleries are located in this compact region known as Speyside.
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