Last week’s whisky review was of the Longrow Rundlets & Kilderkins, which was distilled in 2001 and released in 2013. This week’s review is of a Highland Park that was released more than a decade prior, in 2002. I didn’t purchase it in 2002, however; at the time I had only barely started drinking single malt whisky and I’m not sure I was even aware of Highland Park as a distillery. No, I purchased it in December 2011 (I can tell you the month because in those days I was very meticulous about maintaining my whisky spreadsheet). I found a bottle at a store in a northern suburb of Minneapolis, on the shelf at the same price being asked for the current 18 yo (the flat bottle that had been introduced in 2006/7). I didn’t actually record it as a 2002 release in my spreadsheet though—it’s a funny story, how I came to confirm that date. When I opened this bottle last week, I peered at it against the light to find the bottle code printed on the inside of the label. That bottle code is L0146 B L11 12/03 10:16. Off I went to Google to see if there was any information out there on decoding Highland Park’s bottling codes. I arrived on this discussion on Connosr.com which indicated it was a 2002 release. The information came from a thread on the old WhiskyWhiskyWhisky forums. I clicked on the link to that thread to find…that it had been started by me in December 2011, right after I purchased the bottle. And the question had been answered by two different sources in 2013. I had absolutely no memory of this. I blame the whisky. Anyway, the bottle has been open a few days; here finally are my notes. Continue reading →

Once upon a time Highland Park was one of my five favourite distilleries. These days I don’t really spend much time thinking about that kind of thing but if I did, I doubt Highland Park would make the cut. I’m sure I’ve gone into the major reason before: the endless premium-ization of the brand (which was itself preceded by the transformation of what used to be a distillery refreshingly free of hoo-ha into a brand). Anyway, it’s not just that their prices shot up, it’s also that the quality did not keep up with the prices. Of course, that’s been a much broader problem in Scotland over the last decade; Highland Park is hardly the only one guilty of it. But I can’t remember the last time I was tempted to buy an official Highland Park, even though there have been many of them around, given the emphasis they’ve placed on single cask releases for stores, private groups, wealthy individuals etc.. In fact, the last Highland Park I reviewed was another 12 yo single cask bottled for Binny’s. That one was a first-fill European Oak hogshead (not the most common type of cask). This one was bottled a few years ago, not for a store but for an internet group: the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers. I’m actually a member of the group but I passed on a full bottle of this (on account of the price thing). It’s also from a relatively unusual cask: the much smaller firkin. I’m not sure but I think it might have been finished in a firkin: I can’t imagine that 12 years in a cask that small would yield a very palatable whisky (but I could be wrong). Anyway, let’s get into it. Continue reading →

Highland Park was once one of my very favourite distilleries but it’s been a while since I cared to keep up with what they were up to. Of course, this is not a reflection on the distillery itself but on the owners but they’ve gone down an increasingly silly path of premiumization over the last half decade, with prices increasing and NAS releases proliferating. As I’ve stopped following them, I had no idea they’d launched a new cask strength edition until the chance came up to go in on a bottle split on the first release from 2020. Though as I say that I’m not sure that it is in fact the first release—or rather, what that means. As per Whiskybase, this is the first release of this particular Highland Park Cask Strength (subtitled, “Robust and Intense”). But Whiskybase also lists four other cask strength distillery releases, the last of which came out in 2019—all of those were 350 ml bottles for the Swedish market. So, it may be more appropriate to say that this is the first general release of a cask strength line under the “Robust & Intense” moniker. There’s been a second release in 2021 as per Whiskybase. Unlike the Swedish casks, which don’t specify, this first release is listed as having been matured in “sherry seasoned American oak casks”; the second added sherry seasoned European oak casks to the mix. That one seems to have come to the US too—I’ll keep an eye out for a possible bottle split of that as well. Continue reading →

Highland Park Week began with an indie release from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society which featured a Jamaican rum finish. On Wednesday, I reviewed an ex-bourbon cask from Berry Bros. & Rudd. Here to close out the series is an official distillery release that has the distillery’s favoured official profile front and center: sherry. Indeed, it is a single sherry cask. In the last few-several years Highland Park have really stepped up their single cask program. This one is a 13 yo distilled in 2006 and as per Whiskybase there are at least 40 such releases from the 2006 vintage alone and at least as many from each of the preceding years in the decade (the 2007s and 2008s appear to still be coming online. Not being insane, I have not gone and looked at the details of each cask but a random sampling suggests they’re all heavily sherried and all at ludicrous strengths, and that many if not most are from first-fill European oak casks. It’s no big surprise that this should be the case. In this market there’s only one thing that would top the mix of stupidly high abv and a sherry bomb when it comes to convincing whisky geeks to pay the big bucks and that’s if you add heavy peat to the mix. Continue reading →