Highland Park 12-year-old (Bottled 1970s) /43%/ 0.75l

Highland Park is based in Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney, and is currently Scotland's most northerly distillery.

The distillery has two pairs of stills and produces 2.5 million litres of distillate per year. Highland Park malts its own barley (its own malt covers around 30% of demand) using local peat, which, given the lack of trees in Orkney, consists mainly of heather, which gives the whisky its characteristic flavour. In 1979, the distillery’s then owner, Highland Distillers, made a significant investment in the brand and began heavily marketing Highland Park 12 years old. The bottle presented here dates from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when single malts were a less than niche category, and was intended for the Italian market.

Nose: rich, breath of the moors, honey, apricots, oranges, plum jam, butter cookies, milk chocolate, traces of wax and peat smoke.

Palate: complex, bitter orange jam, prunes, burnt toast, cocoa powder, cinnamon, cloves and roasted chestnuts.

Finish: very long, with notes of honey, caramel, orange, a bit of kitchen spices and a trace of peat smoke.