NEWS
HIGHLAND PARK RELEASED LIMITED EDITION OF ITS OLDEST EVER SINGLE MALT
By Siulan Law Mathews DipWSET
23-1-2025
Source: Highland Pak
Scotch distillery Highland Park has released its oldest ever single malt, only 170 bottles of the 56YO are on sale globally with a price tag of £40,000 (USD49,200) per piece.
Highland Park is one of Scotland’s oldest whisky distilleries having produced Scotch on the remote Orkney Islands for 227 years.
The whisky used in the 56YO was distilled in 1968, it was part of a parcel of ten casks, which master whisky maker, Gordon Motion, identified as having both “exceptional complexity and vibrancy”, when he first sampled them back in 2008.
After refilling them into first-fill sherry-seasoned casks to give them an additional depth of flavour, the whiskies have gone on to produce some of the oldest and rarest whiskies the distillery has released so far.
Source: Highland Pak
The latest release is drawn from one of these particular casks and its contents have never been bottled before.
“Our rarest and oldest whiskies are the ultimate expression of Highland Park’s craft,” said Motion.
“As casks are natural products, and each of them unique, I broadly know what I’ll get from each one, but every now and then I find something interesting that just stops me in my tracks and that’s exactly what I experienced with these ten. The second maturation has allowed me to push them even further and I know we’ve created something special.”
The harsh weather condition in Orkney Islands means that only low-growing vegetation such as heather can thrive, which gives the local peat a unique characteristic.
“Even after all these years, the distinctive character of Highland Park’s heathered-peat stands out,” Motion said. “There isn’t the intense woodiness that I’d typically expect to taste in a whisky of this age.”
Source: Highland Pak
The bottle design and outer pack pays homage to the island’s Standing Stones of Stenness which date back 5,000 years and older than Stonehenge.
The presentation is a collaboration between cabinet maker John Galvin and glass designer Michael Rudak who first came together to work on the Highland Park 54YO release.
Bottled at its natural strength of 47.1 percent, tasting notes of the whisky reads “soft red fruit, cloudy honey, a touch of aged Amontillado sherry, ginger snap biscuits and a subtle waft of gentle, perfumed smoke.”
(the writer can be contacted at: info@thewinechronicle.com)
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