How The India/U.K. Trade Deal Could Transform The Scotch Whisky Market
Introduction
Discover why Highland Park whisky casks are an incredible opportunity for investment – if you can get hold of one.
Highland Park in Five Facts:
- Highland Park Started with a church warden secretly distilling whisky
- Orkney’s Wild Climate and heather-smoked peat give it a unique flavour
- Expensive Sherry-Seasoned casks are used, not standard ex-bourbon barrels
- Limited Naming Rights, mean casks are often bottled with ‘secret distillery’ labels
- Special Edition Bottlings currently retail for over £4,600 per bottle online
The Butcher, Church Warden, and Secret Whisky Smuggler: Magnus Eunson, the founder of Highland Park
Highland Park owes its origins and notoriety to Magnus ‘Mansie’ Eunson, a man whose name has become near-mythic in whisky history. By day, Eunson was a respectable butcher and church warden, but by night – less officially – he was a whisky distiller and smuggler. His operations on the Orkney islands were so bold that he famously hid bottles beneath the church pulpit in Kirkwall.
Highland Park: Whisky from the Edge of the World
There is no doubt Highland Park Distillery itself has become a place of pilgrimage for whisky-lovers from around the world. Highland Park is officially recognised as the northernmost single malt Scotch distillery (though it’s worth noting, recent developments on Shetland may eventually usurp this title).
Perched at the tip of the windswept Orkney Islands, where the North Sea collides with the Atlantic Ocean, few distilleries are as geographically remote of as spiritually connected to their land. Orkney’s landscape is treeless, but not unpopulated. The Orkneys consist of 70 islands, 20 of which are inhabited – residents, called Orcadians, have been under Scottish rule for over 600 years, but they still have their own flag.
However, Highland Park’s location remains not simply remote: it defines the whisky itself. Orkney’s bracing winds, long cool seasons and maritime air shape a highly distinctive environment for maturation, unlike anywhere else in Scotland.
The result is a whisky with a complex flavour profile – a mix of maritime malt and heather-smoked peat. The elemental forces of Highland Park’s Orkney island location are not simply marketing embellishment – they are an inescapable part of Highland Park whisky’s production and process.
Highland Park’s large site on Orkney is made up of stone buildings in the main working area of the distillery, surrounded by no fewer than 26 warehouses. You’ll notice smoke coming regularly from the kilns here, as Highland Park is one of the few Scottish distilleries to malt its own barley on the premises, alongside using a signature heathered peat in the whisky making process.
A Signature Smoke: Heathered Peat
One of Highland Park’s most distinctive characteristics is its use of locally sourced, heather-rich peat from Hobbister Moor. This peat, unlike the marine-influenced, medicinal style found on Islay, imparts a drier, floral and arguably more subtle smoky profile.
Heather roots have accumulated up here on Orkney for millennia, and it is this organic makeup that provides Highland Park’s characteristic balance of sweet smoke and soft spice. The distillery remains the only one in the world to use this particular peat source, and its influence is present in every ‘heavenly, heathery and smoky’ drop.
For whisky lovers, this heather infused peat is key to understanding and appreciating Highland Park; its role has been described by experts as ‘absolutely fundamental’ to distinguishing Highland Park’s most famous expressions, as produced today under the guidance of distillery manager Marie Gulliver: widely recognised as a trailblazing female icon within the whisky industry.
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.