How the other half lives...and drinks.

The terrace of the Esquire House, with a view as far as the ocean, an infinity pool with a $100,000 fountain, and a wall of fire.

So there you are on the terrace of an $18.9 million dollar bachelor pad at the top of the Hollywood Hills watching the sun sink slowly into the west, with a dram of 40-year-old Scotch in your hand. The bachelor's dream place is the Esquire Magazine House, with every room decorated by a different designer, and the Scotch is Glenfiddich, which retails for $3,000 a bottle, one of only 60 bottles made a year.

The question: Are you happy because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity? Or are you sad because you have to go back to your two-bedroom apartment in Lancaster?

I guess it depends on whether you are a glass half-empty or glass half-full person. Me, I was rather appalled that the mythic bachelor the house was designed for had a master closet bigger than my living room and dining area put together.

Can you fit 10 people into YOUR walk-in closet? I didn't think so.

The occasion was a media event to celebrate the multi-million dollar launch of a new ad campaign for the august distillery: One Day You Will. Fitting, I suppose. You could say "one day you will" be a broke-ass journalist who gets to drink expensive liquor and eat ahi tuna and citrus shrimp appetizers in a beyond-comprehension dwelling worthy of "Entourage."

There were lots of jokes going around about the "Saudi prince" we imagined would swoop in and buy the place, but totally not appreciate it. From what I've seen of Saudi princes, they like their interior decoration gaudy and their women pneumatic. So, yeah, I imagine he wouldn't get how amazing the place is.

The unlit glass-bottomed fireplace and the central sitting area in the Great Room.

In the Great Room, a waist-high case displays antique swords lying on a bed of sand. Above it on the wall is an original Basquiat. The entire front of the house is glass, so you can see the incomparable view from the kitchen, dining room, living room and bar.

While cooking in the kitchen, your guests can entertain themselves with a fun feature by Lufthansa. You stand in front of a screen, in a corner made to look like the inside of a passenger plane, and put your arms out. Something reads your body language and when you tilt, it looks like you are turning the airplane. Step forward and it looks like you are going faster, take a step back to slow down.

The Lufthansa sponsored area across from the food prep counter.

The master bedroom was done by Ferragamo, and Carrie Bradshaw would have orgasmed right on the spot. A little corner behind the bed had a small closet area for our bachelor's female guests, and it had amazing shoes and clothes in it.

Fabulous Ferragamos in the tiny lady's closet.

We went on a tour of the house, and in every room we drank a different "expression" of Glenfiddich Scotch. Yeah, I don't know what that exactly means either; in practical terms, it meant how old the bottle was. We tasted 12-year-old in the Great Room bar, 18-year-old in the recording studio lounge, 30-year-old in the media room, and 40-year old on the terrace at sunset.

Interestingly, I liked the 30-year better than the 40. I suppose that you should like something that rare better, but the whisky gets very dense and dark the longer it is aged. They didn't tell us what we were drinking until after the 30-year, and the majority preferred the 18-year.

A row of Scotch tasting glasses. The eyedroppers are for adding just a drop of water, which many say improves and "opens up" the taste.

The master bedroom, with a fur bedspread, but inexplicably, a queen size bed.

Amid all of the modern interior design, we found a fabulous steampunk clock in the master bedroom.

The super-cool thing was drinking 40-year old Scotch with the man who actually makes it. Glenfiddich flew Brian Kinsman, their "master blender," over from Dufftown, Scotland. Kinsman admitted he rarely gets out of the lab. He is on the young side, and plans to make Glenfiddich his life's work. Actually, it sounds like many do: there have only been six master blenders in the company's 124 years, the original being Glenfiddich's founder, William Grant.

You can see a video of Brian explaining how to "nose" Scotch here.

It seemed like the lads from William Grant & Sons were having as great a time exploring the house as we were. Kinsman and Caspar MacRae, William Grant's Marketing Director were asking me if I could live in the "ultimate bachelor pad." Caspar pointed out that there "wasn't a floral print" to be had in the place. Actually, the color palette of autumn colors is right up my street, as the Brits say, and I moved on from Laura Ashley decades ago.

Caspar was an "equerry" for a senior member of the British royal family while in the British Army. When asked how he got that gig, he replied that the royals "come from old money, and they know how to hang on it. Instead of hiring assistants and secretaries, they just ring up the army and have people posted to the palace."

He said that something happens to people when they've been working too long in the palace among the royal family. They start referring to themselves in the third person, as in "One wouldn't like that." Caspar made us laugh imitating them, then saying, "Really? One? Don't you mean 'you' wouldn't like that?"

So, all in all, it was great evening, and I didn't even mind going back to my place which doesn't have bathtubs with a killer view of Los Angeles. I don't have 40-year old Glenfiddich, either, but I do have a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label that my lovely friends bought us for a wedding gift, and I regularly drink 12-year-old Scotch, so I'm pretty content.