Highland Park Magnus

Thanks to my buddy Foster for pouring me this dram… I think. A few centuries ago, one Magnus Eunson, a butcher and church officer, decided he would start running an illicit still and become a bootlegger. He worked out of High Park in Kirkwall, Orkney. This would eventually all become Highland Park. Thus in order […]

Highland Park Stones of Stenness 17 2003 Single Cask Nation

You may be asking yourself “Huh, I thought this was from the well known distillery Stones of Stenness, not some probably made up name like Highland Park”. Stennes is a village in Orkney, Scotland, known for prehistoric monuments known as the Standing Stones of Stenness, a Neolithic monument, which may be the oldest henge site […]

Highland Park 21 1990 Signatory Vintage Cask Strength

Thanks to cake_my_day for this sample. We’re about at the tail end of a recent deluge of Highland Park (“Orkney”, “Kirkwall”) in the independent bottler market. Why? Probably because they needed to make space in a warehouse, and you may as well sell off some casks. As we’re at the tail end, the best, seemingly, has been […]

Highland Park – 17 Berry Bros, 25 XOP, 26 Cadenhead & 21

Recently I ended up having some Highland Parks. This past year (2019) we saw the market flooded with tons of middle-aged Highland Parks under the name “Orkney”. I was lucky enough to try some. The thing about Highland Park is this: It’s good, it’s great at cask strength, and they charge a pretty penny for […]

Highland Park Orkney 8 Signatory Vintage

Thanks to @scotchguy.to for sharing a dram of this with me. There’s been a recent theme that myself (and TWS, oddly) has. You don’t need a super old whisky to have a super good whisky. Yes, it’s hard to get to that complexity that older drams have. And when a blender/distiller has time to age a group […]

Highland Park SMWS 4.236 “Island Holiday Snapshot”

Thanks to /u/Throzen for pouring me a sample of this. In a previous review, I mentioned, erroneously, that Highland Park is the only distillery on Orkney that peats. Fun story: Scapa used to peat way, way back. And then stopped due to hating us. Or whatever reason. I’m totally not taking it personally. Jerks. Anyway, that leaves […]

Orkney 17 2000 The Whisky Agency & Heads & Tails

This year we changed things up with the Toronto Whisky Society: We had two releases. Due to feedback, people requested both a more expensive release and a less expensive release. This brings in Orkney 17 2018 The Whisky Agency & Heads & Tails, not just a whisky with a lot of Ampersands in the name, but […]

Highland Park Full Volume

Thank you to a friend (not on reddit) who poured me this sample. We’ve seen recently that Highland Park was, a few decades ago, playing around with casks. So you have things like Highland Park Fire, which was ex port casks and also Highland Park Full Volume, which was only ex-Bourbon casks. But the experimentation didn’t […]

Highland Park SMWS 4.231 “Harbour-side takeaway”

Thanks to Tim W. for the sample! And what do welcoming people with their own airport say to me when I call them while flying? That’s right: Hi! Land, Park! Thus that’s what I’m going to do for these reviews. It’s the last of the series, don’t worry, you don’t need to read that pun […]

Highland Park Einar

And what do welcoming people with their own airport say to me when I call them while flying? That’s right: Hi! Land, Park! Thus that’s what I’m going to do for these reviews. You know, that thing we all do on a normal basis. Highland Park is known for releasing various series. They don’t overdo […]