{"id":507,"date":"2019-11-22T13:13:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cocktailians.com\/2019\/11\/highland-park-tasting.html"},"modified":"2019-11-22T13:13:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T13:13:19","slug":"highland-park-tasting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cocktailians.com\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"Highland Park Tasting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_20191119_120205\"I had the great good fortune to be invited to a guided blind tasting of twelve different Highland Park<\/a> whiskies the other day. I was the (lucky and grateful) guest of F. Paul Pacult<\/a>, one of the greatest spirits authorities in the world (and B.A.R.<\/a> partner, Spirit Journal<\/a><\/em> maven, Ultimate Beverage Challenge<\/a> impresario, &c), who led the tasting. I learned a lot, not least that I have very good \u2013 or at least very expensive \u2013 taste. There were some remarkable spirits here.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20191119_135344_1\"Paul started off with a brief, fun lecture on whisky, Scotch in general, and specifically Highland Park, noting that he's tasted and reviewed more than 31,000 spirits, and that Highland Park is his favorite Scotch whisky. He said that "if someone were to ask me today what is the most complex of all spirits, I believe it's Scotch whisky. . .next after that I'd say mezcal." He mentioned that Highland Park is his favorite Scotch whisky, and specifically singled out Highland Park 18 as his pick for "the world's greatest spirit." <\/p>\n

\"IMG_20191119_132839\"He went over the process of making whisk(e)y, touching on his six determining factors that affect its taste and the seven steps of production. (That's all fairly basic stuff for most spirits geeks, so I'll skip over this or put it in a separate post.) What makes Highland Park<\/a> different from its Scotch brethren largely centers around its location and some of its process decisions. Highland Park's distillery is in Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney<\/a>, the archipelago off the northern coast of Scotland. (The distillery is the northernmost malt distillery in the UK; it's half a mile north of the Scapa<\/a> distillery, which makes some very different whiskies.)<\/small> HP chooses to dry approximately 20% of its malted barley over peat, giving the finished product a little smokiness but by no means as much as some other malts (esp. those from Islay.) The Orkney Islands are windswept, low, wet, and almost entirely treeless due to the ever-present wind — this means that the composition of the local peat is different than what you'd find in Islay or the Scottish mainland. It's heather, gorse, and other shrubby plants mainly, lending a floral note. HP peat is approximately 4,000 years old, formed roughly when the local Neolithic cultures built the breathtaking Ring of Brodgar<\/a> not far away (Neolithic Orkney<\/a> is a UNESCO World Heritage Site<\/a>, and there are several monuments built between 3180 and 2000 BC, about ten miles west of the distillery.) It's hand-cut from Hobbister Moor<\/a> by the sea, where parts of the peat fields are around 9,000 years old. And, the water used for Highland Park all comes from Cattie Maggie's Spring near the distillery, which produces very hard, mineral water and gives the whisky part of its distinctive taste.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20191119_132834\"After having all that knowledge dropped on us, it was time to taste! All of these were blind to us while we tasted, and Paul told us what we'd had, after every few expressions. HP has an enormous line of whiskies<\/a>, but here's a quick list of what we tried, along with age, alcohol percentage by volume (i.e., double it to get the proof number), suggested retail price, and some brief nose and tasting impressions:<\/p>\n