Highland Park 12 Year Old Single Cask 974

Maxxium Netherlands is a distributor in Amsterdam, with quite the portfolio, including brands from Beam Global and the Edrington Group. Edrington owns, besides The Macallan and The Famous Grouse, the popular Highland Park. This 12 Year Old is a single cask at cask strength, released for the general population in bottles of 35cl in March 2008. The ABV is even higher than that of the Hjärta.

The prickly nose first offers cocoa powder (the unsweetened, bitter variety) and honey. Quite some nuts. I am reminded of hazelnuts and almonds. New leather, pipe tobacco, waxy like furniture polish. The sweetness turns into something meaty, like gravy. Adding water is not a good idea. I then get putty and gyproc, before the sweet fruit struggles back to the surface.

Undiluted, this is a sturdy bloke, on prune jam, dark honey and quite some spices like thyme, mint and heather. A light bitterness from the oak. Good balance. Diluted, it reminds me more of an orange licqueur, but from a bottle that has been open too long.

The finish is long on black pepper with a bitter lining.

Surely, this is good HP, but absolutely no swimmer. So do not add water and take careful sips. Around 60 EUR for this half bottle, but hard to find these days.

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