After a whole week, it’s time to close the game with the Highland Park tasting: we’re having the first dram we’ve had, a vatting of 10 to 15 years old casks (the one who attended the tasting used to remember it was 100% bourbon casks, but internet says it’s 70/30 bourbon and sherry: ahi, memories…) hand selected by Martin Markvardsen, the huge HP Brand Ambassador. Let’s go.
N: during the tasting, people murmured it was “the most Highland Park” of the whole set of new bottlings. At first you get the casks, with pastry notes, apricot jam croissants, vanilla, raisins and stewed fruit, while constant live the mineral hints, with soft peat, acrid and mineral, without being properly smoky. Some ripe orange peel; honey, some caramel; spicies too. A sort of a smoked tea feeling.
P: great intensity, with a pleasant and chewable body. Notes are close to the nose, but the intensity is higher: so vanilla, raisins, honey, quite massive; then mineral notes, dirtier than on the nose, peatier and more earthy. Again some ripe citrus, maybe red oranges. Very very pleasant.
F: the peaty side grows bigger, here clearly smoky; then again honey, croissants and raisins.
Good, very good, and it’s only 50€! A 10 yo with a full personality, that doesn’t dismiss the distillery’s hallmarks, getting to be much more respectful to the spirit, if we may, than the lately pale 12 yo, and for sure much more pleasant than many Duty Free bottlings put on the market in the last years. Bravo, Martin: 86/100.
Recommended soundtrack: The National – Morning Dew.
