Highland Park 2000 Berry Bros & Rudd 17-Year
56.5% ABV - Orkney Islands, Scotland
Nose: This begins quite delicate, with sweet hickory smoke, a slightly sulphurous/matchstick undertone, and then light fruits and berries come through. Minor notes of beeswax. Smokier than the core range.
Taste: Baked apple, green fruits, with toasted coconut, charcoal-laden smoke, and peppercorn. As it develops there are more woody notes and a floral or honey character.
Finish: A fairly high alcohol presence here at cask strength, but the flavours I’m grabbing are grasses, a herbal character, coconut, vanilla, citrus, and, to a lesser extent, roasted nuts and a soapiness.
This independent bottling by Berry Bros. & Rudd is unlike the Highland Parks that I am used to! It’s punchy, it’s raw, it’s not soft and rounded. That is the beauty of single cask whiskies—they really get the opportunity to show different examples of what the malt is capable of.
br>I really don’t look at legs that wine or spirits leave on a glass very often, but this dram has noticeably a viscous and dense lining! Regarding what is inside, there isn’t a dominant barrel influence—it really comes across as a refill hogshead. The only hint we get is American oak.
Overall, I’m really happy to have a place for this bottle on the shelf, but it missed the mark on what I was hoping for. This is still very spirit-driven and has not relaxed with time as much as I expected it would (and wanted it to). The comparison between Bowmore 12-Year and 17/18-Year is what I had in mind… Anyway, this Berry Bro. & Rudd bottling of Highland Park was great value and an excellent example of some "calculated risk" (that paid off) when buying a bottle of whisky I couldn’t sample first.
Details: Bottled 2018, Cask Ref. 5. Exclusive for "Companions of the Quaich".
Tasting Notes (Official): The nose suggests a perfect balance of Orcadian peat smoke and delicate vanilla from its maturation in American oak, honey and tablet notes offer further promise. The palate is pleasingly complex offering more honey, citrus fruit along with soft wood spice and peat. A long and lingering finish shows wood spice and a resurgence of peat.
Tasted 01 March 2021. (Posted 10 June 2021.)
