It’s late March and the phone rings, it’s Whyte & Mackay, the famous Scottish company that own The Dalmore Distillery – producer of seriously high-grade single malt whisky since 1839. Such is the quality of their Scotch that, last year, two bottles of their 64-year-old Dalmore Trinitas sold for £100,000 each. Yep, £100,000. The reason for the call is that a new limited edition expression is about to be released, a 45-year-old that’s limited to 200 bottles and carries a £3,000 price tag – needless to say, I’m listening.

We Heart are invited to an exclusive tasting of ‘The Dalmore Aurora’ – named after the breathtaking natural phenomena, the Aurora Borealis – but, of course, there’s a catch, to truly experience this rare liquid we must seek out its namesake, the Northern Lights themselves. In Iceland. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. I mull over this challenging proposition for all of a few milliseconds, squeak “yes, of course” like an excited schoolkid and, within weeks, I’m heading for Keflavik International Airport…

We touchdown in Keflavik’s predictably quiet airport and are picked up by our driver, who whisks us away to, well, the middle of nowhere really. The sun’s setting as we arrive in Hella, South Iceland, and the lovely, yet decidedly strange Hotel Ranga, billed as one of the world’s premier spots for seeing the elusive Aurora Borealis. It’s bleak out here, really bleak, and the Twin Peaks-esque lodge has suites with bearskins, suites with penguins and space age whirlpools, suites with North African artifacts and a bloody great stuffed polar bear in the lobby. We’re informed that Jake Gyllenhaal and Bear Grylls have just checked out, and that’s rather fitting of this place, it has an air of Grylls’ rugged wilderness, it certainly has an air of Brokeback Mountain but, as the locals begin to recount stories of elves, there’s more than a heavy dose of Donnie Darko’s reality bending madness about the place…

There’s 8 of us on the trip; travel writers, luxury writers, food and drink writers and some whisky chappies who really know their stuff. We need to bond so hit the bar, once again I don’t need much encouragement and am pleasantly surprised by the local beers – you really can taste the purity of the water, even their 9-percent-plus Belgian-style numbers are refreshingly crisp. The bottle of Dalmore Aurora is joining us for drinks, it’s like a toy dog being passed around its cooing admirers, we all position it for photographs and discuss the potential delights within but, as the hotel’s owner introduces us to the ‘black death’ – the famed local spirit, Brennivín – it’s fairly unanimously decided that we’ll leave the tasting until tomorrow when our palettes are considerably less cluttered…

The owner proudly imparts the black death’s checkered history and references in poplar culture – Dave Grohl and Quentin Tarantino are fans – and makes for the freezers where it’s being kept on ice. Half in jest, half in foolish curiosity, I shout behind him; “how about some rotten shark” – we’d earlier been discussing Iceland’s infamous ‘Hákarl’, the poisonous shark which becomes safe to eat after being ‘fermented’ for a number of months, the result being a ‘delicacy’ that evokes gagging even before tasting thanks to its ammonia-rich smell. It’s safe to say at this point that I’m not entirely popular with my new friends, especially when he promptly returns with a devilish cackle. We inspect, we smell, we gag, we chew, we swallow and we knock back a shot of Brennivín. Truth be told the dish that Gordon Ramsay couldn’t hold down and that Anthony Bourdain described as “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he has ever eaten, isn’t really all that bad…

Just as some of the more bizarre of the Ranga’s suites starkly juxtapose their rugged surroundings, the restaurant’s food is strangely at odds with the rustic, sauna-like pine lodge it resides within. At odds in a good way however – you see, it’s just another of the hotel’s intriguing dichotomies – as traditional Icelandic ingredients are served up in a particularly modern fashion. The mountain lamb and lobster surf’n’turf was divine whilst the raw arctic char (trout) starter simply melts in my mouth, the wine was flowing but so was the hail, sleet and rain. Our chances of seeing the Northern Lights tonight were sinking as quickly as the bar supplies….

The locals confirm that our chances of seeing the lights tonight are as slim as waking up with a clear head so we decamp to the bar and are introduced to another local specialty – the Eskimojito – a variation on the Cuban classic where rum is substituted with our new friend, the black death. In the name of research the dwindling group challenge the impressively knowledgeable bar staff with increasingly curious concoctions, until a group of Icelandic architects present us with something truly vulgar – it, of course, featured Brennivín, may or may not have contained other spirits and most definitely featured a foul tasting local malt extract. It does the job and in the early hours of the morning, at sub-zero temperatures, we finally sample the hotel’s hot tubs. In the morning we’ll blame the architects…