The unmistakable wheeze and wail of the bagpipes starts, and a piper marches in slowly, heralding the arrival of a steaming sack of haggis that releases a heady fragrance when slashed with a skean dubh (ceremonial dagger). Fortified by a wee dram of whisky, I find both the pipes and the offal offering uncharacteristically palatable. It is my first night in Scotland, and this is exactly the kind of rich cultural tableau I expected to see: Pomp! Pipers! Sheep entrails!

But beneath the trappings of tradition, this is anything but an old-fashioned experience. I’m at the Gleneagles Hotel, a stately manicured resort an hour’s drive north of Edinburgh, at a special whisky-pairing dinner that’s contemporary and daring. Delicate patties of haggis, layered in a mille feuille with crispy potato cakes, are served with a spicy Speyside single malt whisky. Dessert, a dark chocolate tart, is paired with a shot of Dalwhinnie that has been frozen, giving the whisky a viscous, almost icewine quality. And before dinner – I hesitate to even admit this – I had been served a perfect whisky sour, with blended Scotch whisky in place of the traditional bourbon.

Yes, the country’s national spirit was paired with fusion cuisine, frozen and mixed into cocktails. So ditch the Braveheart fantasies; this is no longer ye olde Scotland. And Scotch whisky is no longer your granddaddy’s drink, judging from the week I spent touring some of the country’s best distilleries and sampling its new spiritually influenced cuisine.

One florid-faced whisky distiller, his accent filled with more burrs than a Scottish field of thistles, explained the whisky business this way: “Scotch whisky production is still a virtually unchanged 18th-century cottage industry, but it’s been discovered by some very clever 21st-century corporations.” Up until the 1960s, blended Scotch was all the rage (and still accounts for 95 percent of all sales). In recent years, single malt Scotches have become a connoisseur’s drink on a par with ultrapremium vodka or cult wine. (Single malts are the product of one distillery, as opposed to a blended whisky like Dewar’s or Chivas Regal, which might combine as many as 40 varieties.)

Whisky’s transition from stodgy old standby to hip rediscovery is as good a metaphor as you’ll find for Scotland, a country typically associated with the past but full of modern potential. Rural Scotland is the very picture of pastoral tradition: vibrant fields of green grass and golden rape, dotted with storybook fluffy white sheep. The sky sometimes looms so low and dark, it seems close enough to touch. Yet even deep in the Scottish Highlands, I find a progressive new attitude rumbling.