You may not, previously, have heard of the Isle of Eriska Hotel, just north of Oban, but you have probably dreamt of being there. It is the stuff of fantasies: a Scottish baronial mansion, on its own 300-acre island just off the West coast of Scotland, with great roaring log fires, dark wood panelling and a kitchen cooking up some of the very best food in Scotland, much of it made from ingredients available just outside the windows. In the contest for perfect places in which to spend Hogmanay, there is little doubt: the Isle of Eriska Hotel is a winner. It is, quite simply, a classic.
In some ways it genuinely is a fantasy. The Scottish baronial architectural style of the nineteenth century was an attempt to create myths and legends from nothing. Although the house was built in one go, in 1884, it was designed to look as if it was the end result of a series of additions over centuries.
Robin Buchanan-Smith, then a Church of Scotland minister at St Andrews university, saw it first from the water in the early 1970s when he was sailing by on a weekend yachting trip. He approached the owners, a Major and his wife, who were using it as a summer house and occupying only three rooms, and asked if he could buy it. He wanted to turn it into a great hotel. 'Young man,' the Major's wife said, 'If you're going to do what you're proposing you're offering us too much money.' And she bartered him down.
The plan was to run it as a 17-room hotel in the summer months and then use it as a religious retreat for the winter. It opened in 1974 but very soon the religious retreat idea was abandoned. Robin's wife, Sheena, occupied the kitchen and, using local ingredients, quickly caught the attention of Egon Ronay, the arbiter of matters culinary in 1970s Britain. Almost three decades later, Robin and Sheena have retired and the hotel, which still has just 17 grand, high-ceilinged rooms, is run by their son Beppo. 'We are now the longest family-owned and -run hotel of this type in Scotland,' he says. Although the facilities now include an indoor swimming pool, gymnasium and golf course, it is the house and its dining room which are the heart of the operation.
Today the brigade of six in the kitchen is overseen by chef Robert Macpherson, a comfortingly solid man who has always worked in Scotland. 'My food is about basic good ingredients,' he says, 'and the good ingredients are here.' He waves one hand at the exquisite view of inlets and coves beyond the window. All the seafood - scallops, lobsters, mussels and more - comes from a boat that lands its catch half a mile away; occasionally Robert has found himself staring out of the window at the choppy seas, wondering whether there will be anything arriving that day.
'Sometimes it's the weather that runs my menu,' Robert says. At the hotel's smokery they cure wild salmon for up to three days rather than the eight hours favoured by industrial-scale producers. Beef, pure Aberdeen Angus hung specifically for them for four weeks, comes from a butcher whom Robert's mother used to babysit. Herbs come from the gardens; water from 100 feet below the hotel straight to the taps. When asked on a council form who was responsible for the water's filtration, Robin Buchanan-Smith wrote, simply, 'God'.
And then there are the wild mushrooms - 56 edible varieties identified on the island so far - which are picked from the dense, wooded grounds, and the seaweed gathered from the shore. 'You see all these chefs in whites wandering away into the woods, led by Robert, like they're on a school trip,' Beppo says. The evening menu that results - a full six courses - walks a careful line between intricate, modern cookery and something that might appeal to more 'traditional tastes' without recalling the dark days of Scottish cookery when menus were dominated by dun-coloured soups and ruined ribs of beef, cut from animals who had died in vain.
'Many of our guests stay for a week or two so our menu changes every night,' he says. 'But there will always be a roast on the trolley and a soup mid-course.' Seafood might turn up in a first course as langoustine ravioli in an oyster broth; there might be chunks of home-smoked salmon with a punchy mango salsa, followed by Scottish guinea fowl and a thyme jus or canon of lamb with roast garlic. And there is always the savoury to finish: Welsh rarebit or Ayrshire bacon and, on past Hogmanays, haggis on toast.
'Hogmanay is part of a four-day event here,' Beppo says. 'We have fireworks, dancing and a piper to bring in the New Year. It usually turns into a house party.' That may be because the same people have been coming to the hotel for almost three decades. Among them are the theatrical dames, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It has also been a bolthole for, mainly Tory, politicians, among them Geoffrey Howe and once, in great old age, Harold Macmillan.
'Macmillan was sitting in the library reading one evening, the book very close to his face because of his failing eyesight,' says Robin Buchanan-Smith. 'An American guest came up to me and said he could now die happy. He had seen a British Prime Minister smoking a cigar and reading Trollope.' It's that kind of place.
Highland fling
How to get there:
Drive two hours north from Glasgow to Oban. Eriska is a few miles north and is reached, over a short causeway. Or take the train to Fort William and drive south.
How much does it cost?
Winter: £125 per person per night, dinner bed and breakfast (minimum of two nights). Hogmanay and Christmas, £850 for four days, full board.
What to eat:
Langoustine ravioli set in a broth of local oysters with squat lobsters and caviar; poached home smoked cod topped with a rarebit and mustard crust; fillet of prime Angus beef with a thyme scented fondant.
What to say:
Shall I put another log on the fire?
What not to say:
Do you get your seafood from Cornwall?
