Highland Park 12yr

I’ve learned an awful lot about scotch since I started this site a few years back and I can honestly say that I had never heard of the Orkney region of Scotland, let alone try a scotch from that particular part of the country. Orkney is an archipelago off the northern tip off Scotland and serves as part of the dividing line between the North Atlantic and the North Sea. In fact, Highland Park touts itself as the northernmost Scotch Whisky distillery in the world.

Founded in 1798, Highland Park is a distillery with a deep history and even deeper web site. While we’ll get to the scotch in a few moments, it is worth noting that the Highland Park web site is a virtual encyclopedia. The presentation is pretty good, but the information contained within is off the charts. The level of detail they go in to about their history, region and process is quite extensive. They also have one of the best tasting and nosing guides that I’ve seen.

It seems like for every review I write, there is a distillery that touts something as their claim to fame and Highland Park is no different. Spend as little as two minutes on their web site of exceptional verbosity and you’ll run across the claim that they are “one of only a handful of distilleries where the expensive and physically demanding custom of turning malt by hand still takes place.” I’m not real certain about the significance of this fact, but figured if they went to the trouble of making the claim over and over again, some of you might have an opinion on the matter.

Color
As for the scotch itself, my immediate impression of the Highland Park 12y was that the packaging is very striking, but the color is quite pale. The distiller notes the color as “Glowing Amber”, but I would have to disagree on that one as I felt it looked a little bit more like “Light Beer”.

Nose
My guard went up with the color, but quickly came down with the nose. It has a decidedly earthy, peaty aroma, but had just the right touch of sweetness to suggest a reasonably balanced palate.

Palate
The nose didn’t fail me on this one as the palate confirmed my suspicions that this single malt would have a fairly smokey flavor with only a touch of fruity sweetness. The palate is quite smooth and easy though and I was a little surprised. I expected it to taste stronger and a bit harsher than than it did.

Finish
The finish isn’t particularly long, but this is where the sweetness finally starts to gets equal time with the peat and smoke.

Highland Park 12y is a pretty good single malt, but not one that has left much of an impression on me. It simply doesn’t fit my preferences. That being said, the one thing I do like about this scotch is that this is a very accessible single malt that favors the peat and smoke over the fruit and honey. Most single malts that fit that flavor profile tend to be strong and a bit much for casual whisky drinkers. This makes the Highland Park 12y a very good introductory scotch for someone drawn to more earthy single malts. While I haven’t tried any of the other Highland Park varieties, I would imagine that the 12yr is the perfect “starter scotch” for their line of products.

After reading some other reviews of this scotch, I noticed that many other sites mention that this is a good scotch for making mixed drinks. Personally, scotch is the last spirit I look to when making mixed drinks, but I can definitely see where this would be a better choice than an Oban or Balvenie. Something to keep in mind.