Highland Park Vintage 1997

This 12 Year Old Highland Park is a Vintage expression, bottled exclusively for the duty free range, meaning you can only find it at the airport in 1 liter bottles. According to many, this is the standard 12 Year Old, but a touch more smoky. It is composed of 1997 casks, both bourbon and sherry.

The nose is soft on salted farm butter, citrus like oranges and even some pink grapefruit, heather (of course, I would say), vanilla and honey and a hint of coconut. It is indeed smokier that the standard 12 Year Old and a lot more complex. Heavy on the sweet peat. Feisty on pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Good start on the palate, slightly bitter but certainly not oaky, with loads of oranges, but also figs. The Orkney peaty is very prominent now. Caramel and again some coconut.

The finish is fairly long and remains smoky until the drying death.

This is pretty good stuff and a whole other story than the standard 12 Year Old. I understand it is being discontinued, so if you still want to ad dit to your collection, now is the time. Last seen for around 45 EUR.

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