Torabhaig sits in the courtyard of a former farmstead, a quadrangular steading belonging to Knock House. Sir Iain Noble set the project going in 2002; restoration began in 2014, the first spirit ran in January 2017, and the visitor centre opened in April 2018. It is Skye's second licensed single malt distillery, and its house style is peated — described by the makers as smoke with taste. Neil Macleod Mathieson is the head whisky maker.
You can walk in whether or not you take a tour. The café in the restored courtyard does fresh scones — cheese, fruit and plain — homemade soup, and filled morning rolls: ham; cheese with mustard mayo; brie and chilli jam; cream cheese and smoked salmon; tuna mayonnaise. There are traybakes, boozy hot chocolate, whisky ice cream, and single drams or tasting flights for anyone not driving. Vegan cheese and gluten-free bread are on hand. There is a high chair and baby-changing, though children under thirteen cannot join the tour. Only support dogs come inside; the rest wait in the courtyard, where water is put out for them.
The village around it is An Teangaidh in Gaelic, the tongue, or a narrow strip of land. Teangue's crofts climb the hillside in small cultivated plots that give way to heath and peat bog, with the shore below. The approach to the distillery is arranged so that Knock Castle and the Sound of Sleat come into view before you reach the enclosed courtyard.
Knock Castle stands on a promontory above Knock Bay, an upstanding medieval ruin over the site of an Iron Age fort, Dun Horavaig. A MacLeod castle stood here by 1402. Royal troops overran it in 1431; a 1596 charter confirmed Donald Gorm Mor's hold on Sleat on condition that the castle be kept available as a royal residence. The last record of anyone living there is from 1632, after which stone was carried off to build Knock House.
Next door to the distillery is Toravaig, an eleven-room hotel with a terrace and a fire-side lounge, serving light food through the day — cheese and charcuterie platters, taken looking out over the garden and the Sound of Sleat. Breakfast runs to poached eggs with hollandaise and smoked kippers; the full evening menu is at the sister hotel, Duisdale.
For a proper bar you go north to Isle Ornsay, where Bar Am Pràban keeps an open fire and a Gaelic character, with live traditional music that turns it into a cèilidh. The food leans on what is landed and grown nearby: langoustines from the old stone pier, estate venison, Skye-grown salads, Sunday roasts. The estate has made its Gaelic Whiskies since the late 1970s and now distils Gaelic Gins beside the hotel.
The other gathering place is An Crùbh at Duisdale Beag, a community-built café, general store and post office that sells local vegetables, meat, seafood and honey, and hosts community events such as table tennis and concerts.
Walkers head for Kinloch, north of the village, where a four-and-a-half-mile route follows an old drove road to Leitir Fura, an abandoned township of houses and barns whose people drifted away by the early nineteenth century rather than being cleared. The path has steep slopes, some muddy stretches and shallow fords, and views across the Sound of Sleat to Knoydart. South, near the ferry, Armadale Castle keeps forty acres of gardens, a playground and a museum of Clan Donald.
Getting here means the A851 — eleven miles from the Broadford junction, about four from the Armadale ferry, where CalMac crosses from Mallaig in around three quarters of an hour. The nearest railhead is Kyle of Lochalsh, roughly half an hour's drive over the Skye Bridge.
Donald Campbell was born in Teangue in 1784, the son of coastal cottars who added kelp work, fishing and labouring to a small plot of ground before he left to join the 92nd Foot in 1803.