HIGHLAND PARK 12

Maybe you took my advice about taking a day trip up the windblown northeast coast of Scotland to John O'Groats, stopping by a few Highland distilleries on the way, but turned around once you got to the ferry for fear of frostbite. All that is left between you and the North Pole are the Orkney Islands, home to our first foray into the 'Island' group of single malt scotches, Highland Park.

I once attempted an ill-advised shortcut through the 'Highland Park' neighborhood of north Richmond. Someone threw a bottle at my car, and so I can't help but associate that unfortunate anecdote with the name. Based on the name they've given some of their other bottlings (e.g. Leif Eriksson, Odin, etc.), they're clearly going for a whole Viking/Nordic Warrior theme. Historically for their location it makes sense, but I suppose that gave me a different expectation of how that would come across in their whisky. You're wanting Led Zeppelin, but instead you get Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. Fine by me on any other day, but I had my heart set on the "Immigrant Song".

I confess I was looking forward to what I thought would be 'Old Pulteney on steroids' based solely on geography and proximity, then mentally hit the reset button once I took my first sips. This is an Island malt after all, begging consideration as an official whisky region in its own right. Of course it will be different, but I had to know why.

A little scotch-related homework never hurt anybody, and in this case it made all the difference. Highland Park advertises their birthdate as 1798, making them supposedly older than the others, but did not have a legal license until 1826. All distilleries were basically moonshiners until the Excise Act of 1823, and went legit shortly after. Shifty marketing if you ask me. On the plus side, I am pleased to discover that my favorite blend, Famous Grouse, contains Highland Park 12 (contrary to popular belief, Britain's omnipresent HP sauce does not).

They are one of the very few distilleries to have their own malting floor. Once malted, they harvest local aromatic peat from Hobbister Moor (how very Tolkien sounding), and slow smoke the malt to a level of 20ppm phenol (more on what that means when we try our first Islay malt). Of the whiskys we've tried to date, this is our first real experience with peat smoke. According to Malt Madness however, this house peat-smoked malt accounts for only 20% of the barley used, the other 80% is both unpeated and purchased elsewhere. More questionable marketing.

Because of the Gulf Stream, the weather in the Orkneys is apparently more temperate than I had assumed; but more importantly, a much more narrow range of temperature fluctuation, much like the Speyside region. This allows for a smoother, more mellow maturation that comes across in the finished product.

There is an additional step undertaken by Highland Park that I had not previously considered. After initially aging in bourbon casks, the malt is split up among various sizes and styles of sherry oak casks, some of the seasoned Spanish variety, some from American sherry, each imparting its own flavors and characteristics. As a finishing step, the whiskys from those separate casks are reintroduced to each other (they call the process 'harmonization'), and aged for an additional six months to further marry all their various flavors. In effect, they are creating a blended whisky with their own single malt. I'm not sure if this is cheating or a clever twist, but apparently it still qualifies as 'single malt scotch whisky' according to the SWR, so we'll go with clever.

Day two, and now I'm armed with a little background insight as what I'm drinking. Let's try this again...

Color is sort of a golden tangerine. Medium body. The peat smoke comes as the primary aroma. If you have tried an Islay malt, you will call it light. If not, it may seem more significant. Some saltiness is detectable, but nothing as pronounced as Old Pulteney. Honey, vanilla, spice. So far, so good.

Because I had tried this before with different expectations, I assumed I would be able to better appreciate what was going on with respect to flavor on my second pass. Yes and no. The peat smoke shows up enough to register, same goes for the salinity. Both played down a few notches. This jives with what I have learned from my homework. But then again, I was expecting that deep richness and dried fruit flavor punch from the sherry cask treatment a la Macallan. Not so much. It reminded me more of that clean, subtly sweet flavor profile of Glenfiddich. A little nutty, a little citrus. Finish was short and oily, with a touch of bitter, like Glenlivet. I added water, which ramped up the smoky aromas and dampened the finish, but the flavor profile was unmoved.

My overall impression was that the requisite flavors were all at the party, but nobody was dancing. Granted, I have only tried the baseline 12 year old expression, but it seems to me that I'm missing something. Theoretically, Highland Park should be a triple threat - the peat smoke for Islay malt fans, the sherry cask aging of Speyside whiskys, and the rugged Highland climate I expected in the first place. Sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I really wanted to enjoy it, after all this bottle was my birthday present to myself, but was underwhelmed. Highland Park 12 aims to please everyone, and to read reviews of it many people really do go ape over this stuff, but in my case it misses the mark.

Overall Grade: 83/100, B-

HOME

Next - For Peat's Sake
Previous - Old Pulteney 12