Highland Park 25 Years Old Cadenhead Small Batch 1 Of 426 Bottles 50.6% 1990

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Serge Valentin (91)

It seems that this baby sold out in a flash. More or less. They’ve vatted two bourbon hogsheads. In my meagre experience, vattings of two or three carefully chosen casks will always pull a better result than a single cask. Well, perhaps not profits-wise… Colour: white wine (ah, third-fill or more!) Nose: the Silver Seal. This will be short. Just a little more angular and ‘fresh’, and a little more herbal. The spirit is luminous. With water: perfect. You’re holding a fistful of Orkney barley in your hands, and just nosing the stuff. Mouth (neat): my stuff indeed. Sharp, waxy, citrusy, herbal, very much focused, well-chiselled, slightly smoky… And there’s this bitterness that keeps it a little ‘intellectual’ (oh come on!) With water: wine. A sauvignon blanc by the Dagueneaus (whether father or son). Finish: sadly. Funny wee touches of sage and basil. Comments: you know, when you ask the Cadenhead folks about how they select their casks and sometimes vat them, they usually answer ‘we do nothing, they’re just there’. It’s like these old Jimi Hendrix interviews, you know, ‘I just play my guitar’. No flannel, that’s so refreshing! As refreshing as this super-great wee HP… SGP:462 - 91 points (P.S., why don’t the owners/distillers have these? Even with the name of some kind of imaginary Norse celebrity, they would be hitsl P.P.S. there are notes of burnt agave and natural rubber arising after twenty minutes, that’s unusual!)