I toured Highland Park this June and it turned out to be one of the better tours I’ve been on. But when planning the trip I’d not planned to tour it at all. This because I’d read numerous reports from whisky geeks about the experience at the distillery being soulless and so on. As all of this seemed of a piece with the relentless premiumization the owners have been engaged in for the last half-decade or more, I tended to believe it. However, when I had a drink in Edinburgh with James he recommended it highly. I still didn’t make a reservation but decided I’d give it a go if the chance presented itself once actually on Orkney. And it did.
That failure to make a reservation almost proved to be fatal, by the way. We’d started the morning at the Standing Stones of Stenness (in a field liberally covered with sheep shit) and then spent a very nice couple of hours driving to and visiting the Italian Chapel. We drove up to Kirkwall from the Italian Chapel and after visiting the cathedral and nearby historic ruins we repaired for lunch in town. We had an appointment for a tour at the neolithic site of Maeshowe later in the afternoon but there were two hours free in between. We’d thought to visit the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall together after lunch but the missus was happy to take the kids there by herself if I wanted to go to the distillery that afternoon instead of the next morning. I tried calling them to see if there was a spot available on a tour but no one picked up. I decided to drive over anyway.
The distillery is at the south end of Kirkwall, literally right next to the road heading out of town. There’s a large parking lot across the road from it. When I got out of the car there was a gale force wind blowing. It almost blew my cellphone out of my hands when I tried to take a selfie in front of the distillery gates! It kept up all afternoon. At Maeshowe I asked our excellent guide if this was a particularly bad afternoon of wind and he said that it wasn’t unremarkable but also nowhere close to the windiest of days they get. Well, I’m glad it wasn’t any windier! The wind saved me from tour disappointment too. Unlike a couple of people who were ahead of me entering the distillery grounds, I went straight to the Visitor Centre to escape the wind and managed to snag one of two remaining spots on the next tour (which was also the only tour remaining that afternoon with open spots). This meant disappointment for the pair who eventually came in behind me but I was not moved to offer my spot.
While waiting for the tour I wandered the Visitor Centre/shop and while it’s very snazzy indeed, I did not find it to be the soulless space I’d heard about. It’s far less antiseptic certainly than at Talisker or even Glen Grant or Glenfiddich, if not quite as characterful as at Lagavulin. They do sell a lot of clothes and non-whisky things but there are some old bottles and the like to gawk at as well. There’s also a circular tasting bar at one end where tours conclude with the tasting portion. Beyond this area is a little auditorium which is the scene of the only part of the tour that is not very good. Yes, the tour begins with a repetitive marketing film (much of the content of which is then further repeated by the tour guide). I should also mention that in a bit of ridiculous meanness the distillery makes those who are driving buy a 4-pack of cheap plastic bottles for carrying one small tasting sample away. Yes, it only costs £1 and did not break my wallet but, on the other hand, I’m not sure why they can’t swallow that £1 either, especially considering they’re making you buy more crappy bottles than needed. On the plus side, the tour (I took the basic one at £10) comes with a Highland Park tasting glass.
Anyway, once the tour proper began, things improved sharply. Highland Park is one of the few distilleries that still has operational malting floors and the tour begins there. Two staff members were actually at work laying out and spreading the barley and it was nice to see the work in progress. From there you go through the production process in the exact same order that you do at all distilleries: you see the kilns, the mash tun and washbacks and then the stills. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Highland Park allow photography everywhere on tours except inside the still house—but you are welcome to photograph the stills from just outside the doors. From there we were taken to Warehouse No. 3, which is a dunnage warehouse (they have racked warehouses as well). There’s some talk here about different types of casks etc. which was very interesting for non-whisky obsessed members of our tour group; no new information for those of us who’ve wasted our lives, however.
At the very end you return to the Visitor Centre and normally the tour concludes with a small tasting around the large circular bar there. In our case, things had gone a little differently. Before the pointless film had started at the very beginning, staff had come in with little nips of whisky which they’d said was to thank us for coming out on such a blustery day. At the end, however, we discovered that that had taken the place of the post-tour tasting! Anyway, it was no skin off my nose as I had the privilege anyway of carting that little sample away in the bespoke plastic sample bottle that I’d purchased. Still, it seemed like another bit of unnecessary meanness.
Here now is an excessive gallery of photographs of the distillery and the tour. Take a look and then scroll down for my thoughts on the experience as a whole and to see what’s coming next.
As I said, the marketing film that begins the tour is entirely pointless. They should dispense with that and either shrink the tour by 10 minutes or let us spend more time in the warehouses or on the malting floors or maybe add a visit to wherever the casks are filled. That aside, the tour was very good. The guide was sharp and there was no dubious content. I do wish as well that it were possible to get a taste of the wort and/or the new make—those elements were highlights of the Pulteney and Aberlour tours.
There was no fill-your-own on offer that I could see. There is a separate Tasting Room but I think that’s reserved for people doing the high-end tours, which end with “the opportunity to purchase an exclusive single cask bottling for only £120.00”. At any rate, we were not told anything about this at the shop or on the tour. I had to rush back to meet the family anyway. It turned out that like the Maritime Museum in Wick, the Orkney Museum is much smaller than you might expect it to be from reading TripAdvisor reviews which say that you can spend hours and hours in there. I picked them up and we repaired to Maeshowe, which was a very engrossing experience (despite a long walk in the unabated wind).
By the way, speaking of Orkney’s history—also on full display at the sites we visited in Kirkwall—you don’t have to spend very much time on the islands to realize how steeped in Viking/Norwegian history they are. Seeing all of that up close made me see Highland Park’s recent Viking-onslaught a little differently. In sum, I’d recommend a visit to Orkney to anyone going to the north of Scotland, and I’d certainly recommend a tour of Highland Park as well. (Thanks, James!)
Okay, two more distillery reports to go: Tomatin and then the Dornoch Distillery. After that I’ll finally post food reports from the trip and looks at a few more Edinburgh whisky shops.
My Annoying Opinions 
Hmm, so no post-tour tasting, you have to buy your own sample bottles… Couple that with the ridiculous ‘Viking’ makeover of their their range and how busy it seems to be and I don’t think you’ve sold me to venture anywhere north of Pulteney! (I still like the whisky, mind)
Glengoyne incidentally do this kind of thing better – with an introductory dram during a pre-tour talk and film and a tasting at the end. Maybe I’m biased because it wasn’t the entry-level tour at Glengoyne but even that one I think came with a dram before and one after the tour.
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To be fair, I also had to buy sample bottles at Aberlour—a 5 pk for £4, but there I actually carried 5 samples from the tasting away and they were proper glass sample bottles. Also, the lack of a tasting at the end of the tour seemed very much like a one-off that afternoon as they had a bigger crowd than usual. Still, it was odd because when they gave us the pours at the start it felt like it was a nice extra—which it turned out not to be.
I did still enjoy the tour. And Orkney is its own reason for venturing north of Pulteney. Unless you go to the north of Scotland often, the option of visiting Orkney is unlikely to arise. And as I said, when you see just how much of Orkney’s history is Viking history, the question becomes not why Highland Park went full Viking, but why they waited so long to do so.
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I’m chuffed you had an enjoyable and memorable time. There is always risk when recommending a distillery to tour as a) the guide may be different b) the dynamic of the tour might be different or c) there may be maintenance/problems meaning some areas of the site may be off limits. Considering my tour was 1) eight years ago 2) just me and the guide and 3) involved nips of the 12YO and 16YO Bourbon Cask afterwards I’m glad Highland Park compared favourably to it’s 2010 experience.
The cultural atmosphere of Orkney is pretty interesting: there is a general feeling amongst Orcadians that they are more Norse than Scottish. When they talk of ‘the mainland’, they mean the biggest Orkney island.
It’s a fascinating place with landscapes the like of which I’ve never seen before. I would love to return as I didn’t get to spend much more than 24 hours there in 2010.
Also, Orkney’s principal poet, George Mackay Brown, is superb. If you can track down his short story collection, ‘The Sun’s Net’, you won’t regret it.
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Would it be wrong to call them “Orks”?
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As it happens, my interest in Orkney was sparked when I was 10 years old—long before I’d heard of single malt whisky—when my parents bought me a copy of George Mackay Brown’s Pictures in the Cave, a cycle of stories for children set around the islands. My own copy is in my parents’ house in Delhi, but before leaving on this trip I purchased another and the boys and I began reading it together while on Orkney. It was very exciting for all of us to encounter some of the places and histories we were encountering on Orkney in the stories as well. And moving to see the memorial to Brown in the cathedral in Kirkwall (right below the memorial to Edwin Muir, who I did not know was also from Orkney and his mentor); and to see his armchair in the museum at Stromness (which is right opposite the house in which he lived).
The book holds up very well indeed, by the way, and can be enjoyed as well by adults not reading to small children.
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I think I shall have to track down that one, too. And thanks for the tip-off about Stromness museum, that will certainly be on the itinerary for my next visit.
It must have been pretty thrilling to come across sites, which you had previously read about and imagined as a child yourself, with your own children in the flesh. Tokyo was a bit like that for me after so many Murakami novels.
I’m glad GMB was on your reading radar already!
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The photos are absolutely fascinating, you should frame some of them. The place – probably the entire Orkney – has such a black-and-white character to it. Windswept and timeless. The stones in the buildings look repurposed again and again over thousands of years. Even the wheels of the barrow on the malting floor look like made out of a Viking shield. Shivering!
I too got a new appreciation for the Viking theme, but I still don’t like it any better, since it seems disrespectful and cheapening – and way too glossy.
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“Unless you go to the north of Scotland often, the option of visiting Orkney is unlikely to arise.”
I tend to think the opposite–that if it weren’t for Orkney, many tourists would never visit the north of Scotland. As it is, it’s probably just an obstacle to be crossed for most of them (often enough by air). Caithness and Sutherland have their charms, but they’re rather subtle ones, compared to the spectacular archeology of Orkney.
The Viking theme at Highland Park doesn’t really bother me, much less than a lot of the misguided and fictionalized Viking obsessions elsewhere in popular culture. At least the Orcadians come by the heritage honestly, and HP don’t try to gussy up the history. Magnus, Rognvald, et al were real people (read the Orkneyinga Saga). The Edrington-style premiumization bothers me.
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Yes, that comment about visiting Orkney was aimed more at the whisky traveler than to the general visitor to Scotland. Once a whisky traveler has gone as far north as Wick to Pulteney, they’re unlikely to go all the way up again just to go to Orkney. Of course, for the normal visitor, Orkney is more of interest than anything between it and Inverness. That said, we did notice that the average visitor to Orkney when we were there (and on our ferries) seemed to be much older than the average visitor elsewhere in Scotland.
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Hi there,
I have not been to Orkney yet.
Before the marketing campaign of HP Orkney was famous for its neotlthic sites and sights.
Of the standing stones and other pois you mentioned not one is of Viking origin afaik.
It is true that the Orkneys were part of Norway unti 1456 but apart from some graves and runes
carved into stones long predating the Vikings I wonder what traces they have left.
There is Viking ancestry among the Orcadians no doubt but I still fail to see the connection
between Vikings and whisky Orkney occupation or not.
Anyway what is really worrying is the reduction in quality with parallel increasing of prices called premiumisation.
Greetings
kallaskander
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There are lots of signs of Viking presence. The neolithic sites are only part of what make Orkney distinctive historically. For example, one of our very favourite places to visit was the Brough of Birsay, an island you can walk to at low tide. Then, of course, there’s the great St. Magnus Cathedral in Orkney and the Bishop’s Palace alongside. And most ubiquitously, if not obviously, there are many place names that derive from Norse.
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Lots of Viking presence on Orkney, very little, historically, in a distillery that was established long after the Vikings came and went, but lots on the labeling for that distillery. Orkney is very windy indeed. Who said that Norse mythology is dead? There’s a factory for it at Highland Park.
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Ha!
But to repeat myself, after being on Orkney for just a few days the surprising thing is not that Highland Park went big with a Viking theme in their marketing but that it took them so long. I’m not saying the marketing isn’t over the top; only that it doesn’t seem as pulled out of someone’s ass as it did before.
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I don’t know – Vikings (once) on Orkney is one thing, but saying that they have anything to do with a distillery that came centuries later is another. The “Viking DNA” angle that HP wants to play takes the idea of whisky terroir to exciting lengths that stretch credibility. Do Vikings make better/different/unique whisky? We’ll never really know, because there are no Vikings making it today at Highland Park and there never were any Vikings making it at Highland Park. What’s more, being a Viking wasn’t just a matter of genetics – it was a violent and not all that respectable occupation that was a matter of what you did and actively chose to do (raid, rape and pillage), not something that you could simply dismiss as saying was “in your blood”, much less claim to be in someone’s blood hundreds of years later. It was a murderous approach to life, but it wasn’t lycanthropy. If the HP still crew made whisky 5 days a week but on weekends sailed dragon ships to attack, burn and plunder nearby towns, then HP could argue it has Vikings making whisky at Highland Park, but it wouldn’t prove that what those employees did on the weekends had any influence on the product – unless various viscera ended up in the process by accident.
Put all of this in the context that it somehow now suddenly matters to HP products that Norsemen once lived on the island long before any whisky was actually produced, but that the cask time of a significant portion of the modern product range isn’t important enough to even mention on the label and, yeah, I call bullshit.
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I love how we can always count on Jeff to take the piss out of anything in the whisky world.
And THANKS for being the one to say that Vikings sucked! Everyone always talk they were super cool, but they were sick bastards. The enemies of many cultures that we typically sympathize with. Murderers and rapists. Screw them and their whisky—no, wait: They didn’t make whisky!
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Oh man, I can’t believe I’m in the position of sort of defending Highland Park’s marketing. I don’t think Highland Park have ever claimed that the Vikings had anything to do with whisky or their distillery (though I could be wrong). They have merely seized upon a major part of Orcadian identity/history to hang their hats on. Again, they’ve done this in an over the top way, but after a visit to Orkney, it does seem clear that Viking heritage/history is a key aspect of Orkney and so it is not laughable per se that the most significant distillery on Orkney should seize up on this theme. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem as out of the blue to me as it initially did.
As for the Vikings, I think I’ve read recently that their reputation for violent conquest is a bit overblown. And as for the rest of Europe at the time, I think it’ll be a bit hard to summon much sympathy for the Crusaders etc. or find most of late-medieval or Renaissance Europe to be non-murderous peaceniks. Quite apart from ravages on their own continent they did quite a bit of spectacular damage to other parts of the world starting in about 1492…
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On the question of a reconsideration of the Vikings.
We saw a version of the exhibition referred to here at the Field Museum in Chicago a few years ago.
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(And it’s all certainly more palatable—given how long ago the Viking period was—than the commemoration of slaveholders and so on in the American whisky industry.)
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Interesting account of the tour. The pictures are really well done. I find the “driver kit” of bottles to be simply bizarre. As you say, simply provide one if that is a concern for them; making you buy 4 just seems petty. However, it is interesting to see the shots of old bottlings with different labels and bottle designs I had not seen previously. If only one could sample those old products to see how the quality of the output may have changed, but alas!
When I first began to appreciate malt whisky I was fortunate to discover HP 12 fairly early in the process and for a long time it remained my favorite whisky (aside from HP 18) and was a tremendous value. Unfortunately now the price has jumped significantly and it somehow doesn’t taste quite as good to me. In fact when I was with our provincial liquor board I had to field calls from unhappy customers about the HP price increases and in some cases ended up having to recommend other products at the original price point! The releases in recent years of pricey special editions in fancy packaging told me that HP had fallen victim to the chase for the high-end market just like Macallan and others had, and the horrid HP 10 they introduced to fill the price point previously held by the 12 rather soured me on the brand. I can’t tell you the last time I purchased a HP product.
I know that organizing tours must be something that the Directors simply put up with as a necessary evil – can’t be much profit in running a visitor center as compared to selling a few more NAS special editions – but it always surprises me how often a distillery gets the tour experience wrong, or at least hits a sour note in the process.
I’ve really enjoyed your write-ups on the experiences during your trip.
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Thanks! Yes, the jump in prices of the 12 and 18 yo is highly unfortunate.
I don’t suppose you have any opinions on the historical reputation of the Vikings?
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The Highland Park website, under “Viking Roots” (https://www.highlandparkwhisky.com/viking-roots/), makes claims such as:
“Our islands had become home to those earliest Vikings settlers – and it was a home they never left. Today, one in three islanders bears Viking DNA and we Orcadians feel strongly connected to our ancestors, sharing their pride, integrity and fierce independence. At Highland Park, we are justified in proudly stating that our whisky is crafted by modern-day Viking souls.”
Again, being a Viking is more than simple genetics; it was something individuals actively did or didn’t do. Not even all Scandinavians went “a-viking” but, to hear HP tell it, there are still Vikings souls on Orkney today and the murder rate simply doesn’t support that nonsense. Claiming Scandinavian ancestry doesn’t make you a Viking, much less influence a distillery no Viking ever saw.
“ONCE A VIKING, ALWAYS A VIKING – Our founder, Magnus Eunson, was a direct Viking descendant. A butcher and church officer by day, and a smuggler by night, he set up his illicit still at a little bothy at High Park, overlooking Kirkwall – still the site of Highland Park today.”
So, if being of Viking descent made lovable rogue Magnus the acknowledged criminal he was – once a Viking, always a Viking – then are one third of people on Orkney criminals today because of their Viking DNA? Doomed by fate and their criminal bloodline, should at least Magnus’ descendants be screened and arrested on that basis? If being a Viking is a matter of genetics, how did anyone ever become a Viking before there were any Vikings to inherit the “Viking gene” from? Blood will tell… and so will nonsense.
“In fact, you could say we’re a whisky crafted in the old way by a new generation of Vikings.”- you could say that, and HP does, but it’s still complete bullshit. How about “NEVER A VIKING, NEVER A VIKING” because no one at HP… was ever a Viking? Could Scapa start a “Scapa – the rational whisky” campaign?
Talking about Vikings, particularly those who have been given a kinder, gentler historical refit, might be more palatable than talking about links to American slaveholders – and it is important to note, as MAO does, that part of the reason it is more palatable IS that the Vikings are further back in the past – but at least there was modern whiskymaking that can claim links to the slaveholding era, whether or not that is something that should be celebrated. With the Vikings, palatability and accuracy are two different things as it applies to Highland Park, even though, ironically enough, Vikings, too, were slaveholders.
As MAO said himself, and it’s something with which I agree, “a Tradition of Distilling is not the same thing as a Tradition of Founding Distillers”, but how much more is it true that “a Tradition of Distilling is not the same thing as a Tradition of maritime raiders who never had anything to do with stills they never saw nor operated?”
Chalk it all up to more “harmless whisky nonsense”, I guess, but I do wonder how much further reality can be stretched for the benefit of industry marketing campaigns.
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Oh no—not fierce independence again!
For once, I’d like someone to claim apathetic independence.
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Jeff, do you think there is anything to be taken in by in this proclaiming of Viking heritage? This is what separates something like this from distilleries claiming bogus production differences (too many to mention) or fudging of actual origins of whiskies (see NDPs in American whiskies) in their marketing. In contrast, Highland Park’s origin stories are at worst silly.
And your definition of “Viking” seems a little out of date. Archeological evidence suggests that Viking settlers and agriculturalists were real (and on Orkney), and that it’s not just being another 700 years back in time that makes claiming Viking heritage less problematic than commemorating 19th century slaveholders—or Captain Morgan, for that matter—as part of your tradition/culture and in your brand identity while the direct effects of that racial history are still very much with us. Given that, I’m not sure, again, why their invoking Norse heritage should be so objectionable when that Norse heritage is actually manifest on the islands. I can’t imagine you’d object to Highland Park claiming an Orcadian identity or spirit, much more vaguely defined.
And, again, I do agree that the marketing is wildly over the top and that it would be nice to have fewer longboats and lower prices.
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Well, the Viking heritage I see invoked on HP’s labels doesn’t have much to do with peaceful settlement – it has to do with dragonships, warriors, axes, swords and spears, thunder gods and, by extension, celebrating smugglers. That being the case, I don’t know if it’s my or HP’s definition of Orkney’s Vikings that needs work in terms of historical accuracy, but we both seem to be on the same page as to what aspects of Viking heritage are being celebrated here, whether or not they ever had anything to do with people and events around Kirkwall. Valkyries weren’t the choosers of the dead farmers, and the slain the Valkyries did take weren’t being recruited for a plowing match or a barn raising.
“I can’t imagine you’d object to Highland Park claiming an Orcadian identity or spirit, much more vaguely defined.” Exactly, and well put! – if more vaguely defined, and more inclusively defined. Vikings clearly had something to do with Orkney and Orkney clearly has something to do with Highland Park, but no Viking ever distilled a drop at Highland Park and none are doing so today. Vikings on Orkney (once upon a time) is historically accurate. Vikings at Highland Park is simply bullshit. Also, if it’s a big deal that one third of Orkney’s inhabitants have Viking DNA then the same math, and logic, dictates that it’s twice as big a deal that two thirds don’t. Are the latter somehow lesser Orcadians, or have less influence on the distillery, because they can’t claim the same heritage as all the modern non-Vikings making non-Viking whisky at never-was-Viking Highland Park?
In terms of heritage, I see the HP Viking thing not so much as something that does, or could, have anything to do with a distillery established in 1798 and not 798, but rather a direct descendant of all of the other whisky-related nonsense and double-dealing that you mention and that we both abhor. Whisky has entered a post-truth era, in which making a buck supposedly justifies saying just about anything – and claiming to have “a new generation of Vikings” running your distillery is a bogus production difference if I ever heard one, both in terms of whatever difference employing Vikings would supposedly make to the product (compared to the influence of others’ pride, integrity and fierce independence) but also the inconvenient fact that there are no modern Vikings to run said distillery anyway. If the defense to that is claiming Viking heritage extending, incredibly, into the modern era is really claiming a distinction without a difference in terms of what happens in Highland Park’s whisky production (probably a rational move), then none of the Viking nonsense matters or ever mattered.
If the view is that all of this is harmless because it’s so transparently fantastical, then I consider the point that it’s bullshit made, but I don’t consider it harmless, just another step in whisky becoming ever more detached from reality to serve marketing ends. “Viking warriors matter but age doesn’t” at Highland Park makes “colour matters but age doesn’t” at its sister distillery Macallan look like hard science. Some do see the rampant age of producers “just making shit up” as harmless because, yes, they can easily see though it, but producers just making shit up isn’t often just transparent – it’s actively supplanting discussion of issues that really do matter to whisky, the tall tales told instead of the brass tacks examined, like what people are actually buying and what goes into it. We’re tolerating ever increasing levels of nonsense while only occasionally becoming conscious enough to see that we’re in an age of nonsense, yet wonder how we got here.
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I have to admit that I sometimes do no more than just skim Jeff’s longer rants, but all this Viking take-down here is just absolute GOLD. Gold, I tells ya.
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Responding to Jeff’s last paragraph: I think that when something is so obviously fantastical there’s no real duping of consumers happening; therefore, I wouldn’t put in in the same category of “detached from reality” marketing as things like bourbon aged on a boat, which people actually believe is worth paying a premium for.
And to Highland Park’s credit, while they’ve not put ages on some of their Viking bottles, they’ve maintained them on the rest of the line (the 12 yo may now be Viking Honour but it’s still 12 years old) and put ages on other new releases sold as high concepts (Full Volume, for example). The premiumization is a problem, as Mr. TH says, but I’ll give them (some) credit where it’s due.
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I’m waiting for the “Viking Honour 12” to become the plain old “Viking Honour.”
And I appreciate that these Vikings have the decency to use the British spelling. That must be a nod to their 2/3 British genetics.
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Claiming you have Vikings working at your stills when that was never the case is certainly detached from reality – sliced thick or thin, it’s all baloney. I guess people are only duped if they think that they are buying “Viking whisky”, yet that is the message that HP is now sending about their product and what the HP Norse campaign is about; Highland Park has become Vikings ‘R’ Us with the point being to sell more rather than less scotch through the use of Viking nonsense. Bourbon aged on a boat is almost certainly bogus in terms of the difference it makes to the product, but it is, at least, a physical process, not just a case of claiming, via DNA testing, that there are modern-day Vandals, Huns or Magyars distilling in Kentucky.
I certainly agree with MAO’s points on credit where it’s due at HP, however.
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I think it’s possible you are being a little more literal-minded than most people on the Viking stuff…
And to the point of credit where it’s due: I forgot to mention that while their new duty free whiskies have ridiculous names (Gall Bladder of the Otter and so on) most of them also have age statements; a great improvement over the range they replaced which had Viking names and no age statements.
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Fair enough but, in my own defense, it’s only a case of reading what HP is saying, not reading anything INTO what HP is saying. I’m only commenting on the nonsense; I didn’t come up with it to give HP a black eye. I don’t know if HP is doing genetic screening to find the “right” third of Orcadians to be employees, if they’ve fired those whose DNA doesn’t measure up, or what difference it’s (now) supposed to make to the whisky itself, but “at Highland Park, we are justified in proudly stating that our whisky is crafted by modern-day Viking souls”, apparently making “a whisky crafted in the old way by a new generation of Vikings.”
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The part that I found most objectionable was celebrating the Viking warriors’ battle cry in “Highland Park Full Volume”.
Unless it refers to the integral, one-volume edition of the Norse Mythology.
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When it comes to a whisky called “Full Volume” that can’t break 50% ABV (or even match Quarter Cask… say what?), no one is likely to confuse it with the Edda anyway, but full points for finding a recent HP that doesn’t pretend that Orkney is Norway.
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Alright, now you’re picking a fight with all of Scandinavia. God help you if the Icelanders or the Faeroese get a hold of you.
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