HIGHLAND PARK

31 Year old single MALT

This single cask malt offers slightly above average peat for Highland Park, heather honey rich with tannins and peat, and a heavy saltiness. The palate is silky, offering a greeting heavy with smoke and lightly oiled barley sugar, and some dark liquorice sweetness, underlined with exotic fruit. The nose is long and smoky, drawn out with teasing spices and molasses, oak and delightfully softened with phenols at the close.

Cask Number: 1531

Vintage: 1987

Strength: 47.1%

Region: Islands

Bottled Year: 2019

Bottles: 185

Highland Park Whisky by The Perfect Fifth

Pretty near perfect HP for its age, and one of the best examples of the distillery of that era I have nosed for a very long time. Slightly above average peat for a HP, which works perfectly in its favour. The usual heather honey has been skewed slightly by the heady mix of tannins and peat. The saltiness is profound, the oak a rich, spicy backbone. The sweetness is subtle and still honeyed, but more now a blend of Manuka and orange blossom. Truly magnificent!
Scotland’s silkiest malt at its most silky. The bold smoke on arrival is caught in the velvet gloves of the lightly oiled barley sugar, a dark liquorice sweetness spreading as the oak makes its mark. The spices are prim, proper and just so, never moving out of their set orbit while the honey starts to make its long-awaited mark, bringing with it the light smoke; a quick surge of exotic fruit underlines the antiquity with aplomb.
Long, increasingly smoky with the spices still teasing and forging a beautiful duet with the molassed sugars; the oak beats out an aged pulse but the phenols return to soften as well and entertain.
This is a malt whisky coming to the end of its life, like a star becomes a white dwarf before the end of its existence. In density is huge…and I mean gigantic. The oaks are about to explode…but the cask has been bottled in the nick of time where the balance is still near perfect. Fine margins…for a very fine whisky.

Reviews

“Nose: it was different era, and clearly a different style at Highland Park, much more on tropical fruits and honeyed touches. Mead, papaya juice, avocado juice, heather honey (that’s very HP), cider, hops (IPA), honeysuckle… At the other end, no chalk, no seawater, and no acidic lemons.

Mouth: very good, but probably a little more uncertain, certainly meady, honeyed, a touch sour, rather with sweeter blood oranges than with bursting tenser citrus. It’s not very mineral either, but don’t get me wrong, it is lovely honeyed older HP.”

Serge Valentin, WhiskyFun (86 points)

Region: ISLANDS

There are 800 islands scattered off the coast of Scotland, and just a handful of those produce whisky. The region therefore covers a huge geographical area, encompassing a spectacular variety of styles and flavour profiles: From the heathery and smoky whiskies of Highland Park on Orkney, to the malty rich whisky of Arran and the thick, herbal spirit of Tobermory on Mull. The only exception is the island of Islay, which is so prolific in its whisky making that it is regarded as whisky region in its own right.

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Distillery: HIGHLAND PARK

The origins of Highland Park are obscured by myth; whether it was the site of Viking descendant Magnus Eunson’s illicit still, or built by farmer David Robertson, the distillery was officially founded in 1798. Orcadian peat is composed mainly of sphagnum moss and heather, resulting in a flavour profile very different from that of the mainland, more aromatic and fragrant. This influence is hugely apparent in this archetypal example of the distillery’s produce, which has made Highland Park one of the best-selling and most recognisable single malt brands from Scotland.