Highland Park, You're Fired!

I was a big fan of the Highland Park Ice, so I thought it would be fun to try the newest whiskey in that series. Highland Park Fire. Fire was aged in refill port casks.

Highland Park Fire, 15 yo, 45.2% ($300)

The nose is malty with beer notes. The palate starts with that same malty beer but then has peat and a skunky note that lasts into the finish, which is quite skunky and a bit flat. Yuck! This tastes like flat, skunky beer

I gave this one about a week of oxygen, and it did develop a bit. After a week, the nose had a more traditional peated malt nose and the palate got sickly sweet, but it still maintained those bitter beer notes, so it changed, but it didn't really get better.

I'd stay away from this one.

Thanks to Josh Peters for the sample. 

Is Highland Park Ice Worth Your Cold Cash?

Highland Park Ice Edition is a new, 17 year old expression from the Orkney Island distillery.  It's bottled and priced similarly to the Valhalla Collection, though the strange wooden frame looks like a mountain or pyramid instead of a ship. Highland Park recently cleared a label for a Fire Edition, so this appears to be another series.

Highland Park Ice Edition, 17 years old, 53.9% ($300)

The nose is very nice, malty with light peat notes. The palate opens with sweet honey malt notes followed by some light peat. The finish is dry and peppery.

This is a nicely composed and well balanced malt. Tasting notes really don't do it justice because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's highly drinkable and the dry finish leaves you wanting another sip. This is the type of balanced malt that Highland Park can do so well. It reminds me of some of their older releases that I really loved. The only downside is the price, but hey, did I mention the mountain shaped box?

Thanks to Highland Park for the sample.

Old Standbys: Highland Park 18

Sometimes it's good to go back to basics.  Highland Park 18 year old has long been a staple of single malt lovers everywhere.  It was one of the whiskeys I tried early on that really turned me on to Scotch, but like many of those old favorites, I haven't tried it in quite a while, passing it up instead for flashy new releases.  The price of this one has gone up over the years making it less of a staple and more of a splurge.  Nonetheless, I thought it was time to try a current edition of the old standby.

Highland Park 18 yo, 43% abv ($130)

The nose brings me back to all those nights with Highland Park.  It's got well balanced malt and peat with some fruity notes in the background.  The palate is grassy with just a touch of peat and maybe a bit of sulfur.  The finish is salty with some very light sherry on the nose.

Is this everything it once was?  It's hard to say as I didn't have the opportunity to do a side by side with an earlier batch.  It doesn't have quite as much complexity of mouthfeel as I remember, but even if it's not everything it once was (and hardly anything is), it's still a good, balanced malt.  It has elements of peat, sherry and bourbon cask malt with none being overly dominant.  I'm glad to see it's still such a reliable, drinkable malt, and I'd still recommend it without hesitation.

Darker Still? Highland Park Dark Origins

In the world of Scotch, the first decade of the twenty-first century was all about peat.  Everyone from Speyside to the Lowlands was dumping peat into everything they could while traditionally peated whiskeys competed for the title of highest ppm.

But the century's second decade has seemed much more focused on sherry.  Everyone seems to be putting out big rich sherry cask whiskeys.  Jim Beam even skipped the middleman and dumped sherry directly into their last Distiller's Masterpiece release.

Now comes Highland Park with Dark Origins, a no age statement whiskey composed of a higher proportion of first fill sherry cask aged malt.  It comes in an opaque black bottle reminiscent of some of Bruichladdich's bottlings.

Highland Park Dark Origins, 46.8% ($85)

The nose is heavy on the sulfur with sherry notes underneath.  There's some fruit under there but it's hard to get at with all of the big sulfur notes.  The palate is pretty similar to the nose with a big blast of sulfur up front followed by some much lighter, sweeter fruit notes (mostly grape).  It tastes strong for its abv.  The finish has a bit of sweetness, especially on the nose but a lot of sulfur on the palate, and after a few seconds, it develops a strong bitterness.

Highland Park usually keeps the sulfur in check in their distillery bottlings, but I've definitely had some independent HPs that were over the top with sulfur notes.  This one goes more in that direction.  I imagine there will be some folks who will really love this.  I tend to be very sensitive to sulfur notes, so, while it's certainly drinkable, it's not something I would reach for very often.

Whiskey Wednesday: Cleansing with Highland Park 40

What can I do to restore my palate after three weeks of the Whisky Weirdos World's Worst Whisky Awards? Well, I thought I should go with something really great, or at least really expensive. Highland Park is one of my favorite distilleries, but I don't write much about them because they don't put out many new releases that are priced within reach to the average consumer. Despite some of their high prices, I have great respect for HP and it was a Highland Park whisky that was probably most responsible for turning me into a whisky nut. I also appreciate that at whisky fairs and tastings, they pour generously from their 30 year old expression, which for a long time was their oldest regular expression. A few years ago, though, they came out with a 40 year old, followed by a 50. I assumed I would never taste the 40, but here I am with a miniature in my possession.

Highland Park 40, 48.3% (Several Thousand Dollars)

The nose on this is a beautiful balance of sherry and malt; the sherry is present but not at all overwhelming, yielding beautiful fruit notes. The nose is really wonderful, balanced, nuanced and very consistent with the same fragrances in the first and last sniff. The palate begins with sweet sherry notes and trails off into malty, grassy and some floral notes with maybe the faintest tinge of smoke, which comes to life in the finish. This is very nice stuff with lots of interesting elements. Overall, I'd say the palate is not quite as balanced or nuanced as the nose, but good stuff nonetheless.

Of course, given the prices on this, it's hard to recommend it to anyone who's not a tycoon, but it sure was fun to try.

Whiskey Wednesday: Highland Park

Way up north, I mean way up north, like Santa Claus north, on the remote Orkney Islands Northeast of Scotland lies one of the world's finest whiskey distilleries, a distillery that makes some of the most complex, balanced whiskey there is: Highland Park.

In these days of experimentation and outside the box whiskey, there is something reassuring about Highland Park. Despite all of the trends out there, they have refused to budge. The good folks of Orkney aren't releasing super-peated versions, 4 1/2 year old bottlings, burgundy wood finishes or special bottlings to be drunk on ice or with milk or bananas or whatever. While they did recently revamp their label and bottle, they have been pretty good at sticking with what's inside. They have stuck by the basic lineup which includes 12, 18, 25 and 30 year olds (and a soon to be released 40 year old), with an occasional anniversary edition and a number of limited releases.

In addition, HP seems to be one of the most prevelant whiskies among independent bottlers. This allows the HP fan the ability to taste all manner of single cask and cask strength versions and compare them to the distillery bottlings.

My own favorite HP, and possibly my favorite whiskey of all time, is the Bicentenary Vintage 1977 Reserve. Distilled in 1977 and bottled in 1998 to mark the distillery's bicentennial, the Bicentenary is a masterful whiskey. I have never tasted a whiskey with this type of balance. All of the flavors are in harmony, the peat, the malt, the spice...it's all in there at the right levels. There is a reason Jim Murray refers to this particular bottling as "truly fantastic, to the point of flawless."

The Bicentenniary was a "limited release" but seems to still be around, though I hear it's getting harder and harder to find. Last time I checked, it was running around $140 at your better liquor stores. Now, I am quite careful about dropping that kind of money for any beverage, but this one is worth every penny. So if you see it and you can afford it, buy it.