Highland park valknut review series#

Highland park valknut review series#

Two months ago Highland Park Distillery has launched a new series for the Travel Retail market and this time it’s not Viking or Norse mythology themed, or at least not directly. Highland Park Wings of the Eagle 16 Year Old (Travel Retail) Review This entry was posted in Whisky Reviews and tagged Highland Park on Octoby Yoav Whisky Gospel. Subtle smoke and charred oak (but less than Wings of the Eagle), lightly sugared preserved berries juice and citrus. Nose: Sweet honey, a bit of vanilla, dried berries and after a short while also nutmeg and cinnamon spices. Highland Park 18 Year Old ‘Viking Pride’ (Travel Edition) (46%, £98/ €107,01) I reviewed the classic HP 18 Year Old back in 2015 then when I visited the distillery and it will be interesting to see how this new travel edition fares against it and against the 16 Year Old Wings of the Eagle. This travel edition is using the same recipe for the standard 18 Year Old but is bottled at marrying strength and isn’t reduced further to 43%. In addition to the new beast-y trio of Travel Retail offerings from Highland Park distillery, there’s also a travel edition of a classic HP icon and staple – Highland Park 18 Year Old. After a while in the glass, more peat smoke and heather. Then I was surprised to nose fresh raspberries and cranberries, nice touch. Nose: Chocolaty and creamy, dried berries, Creme Brulee, mocha and cinnamon, earthiness, subtle smokiness and leather. This sounds like a good formula for a good whisky, even without going the extra mile with this special bottle design but that extra step shows you just how crowded is the market, even for A-level distilleries. So what do we have here? A whisky that contains a high percentage of first-fill European sherry casks, then some first-fill American oak (all sherry seasoned) and a few refill casks. Now, this is all cool and nice but we should remember this is a release intended to refill a niche between the 12 Year Old and the 18 Year old that was missing since they stopped producing the 15 Year Old 5 or 6 years ago. Why a ceramic decanter? Rewind a century or two and our whisky would have been stored in earthenware vessels. Instead of using their regular and well-known bottle design they went for a ceramic bottle.

Highland Park distillery went this way with the latest core range release, the Highland Park 15 Year Old Viking Heart. It definitely looks like an easy (even if not so cheap) way to grab attention, headlines and generally draw eyes to specific products. However, even well established distilleries resort to gimmicks and special or unusual designs from time to time. In my last post where I reviewed the Lindores Abbey first release I remarked that new distilleries have long road ahead of them to establish themselves, using stories, anecdotes and unique bottle and packaging designs.