Highland Park 1989 30 Year Cask Strength Connoisseur's Choice (Gordon & MacPhail)

Rating: 21/23 Happy birthday to me! Celebration time! Time to open the most expensive bottle I ever purchased! At the time I bought it, Highland Park was my favorite distillery. I've gone through lots of favorites though. I'm very excited to try such an old bottle of Highland Park, which I still consider to be excellent, but the rose tint has faded from my glasses. N: Full with bourbon vanilla wood leading into campfire smoke with hints of salty minerality. Distant notes of roasted meat amidst char. More char than I'd expected, really. Faint apricot, tangerine, and orange peel. A much more mature and appealing version of dirty socks. I don't even know what to think right now. P: Full with some heat. The alcohol does show through. Getting past that, I get that usual Highland park character - sulphuric meatiness with bourbon barrel vanilla and spice, mixed with tangerine and sea spray - mixed with dungeness crab, some maltiness, an extra note of orange zest, a surprising amount of charcoal, hints of barbecued meat, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and faint black pepper. F: This is more on the bitter and full side with lingering malty caramel (toffee?), rich citrus, and big, slightly meaty, char. This is a very nice finish, but it over-emphasizes the char and doesn't have a huge amount of complexity. - Conclusion - This is more mature, full, bold, refined, complex, and bitter than Loch Lomond 19 Royal Portrush. I think that this is easily the winner between the two. Is this perfect though? Certainly not. I'm enjoying this a lot, but it has too much charcoal for me to consider giving it full marks. I'm considering a 19 to 22, with a 19 being the least likely, but a 22 also being pretty unlikely. This is an excellent dram, but at the price and age it really doesn't deliver the legendary flavor and experience that it needs too. To be frank, I adore this, but I also acknowledge that this could only be worth the money if it were a full on 23/23, which it isn't. I think that the char is the biggest problem here. That barbecue aspect just doesn't fit the rest of the profile. It's a bit odd an unbalanced. So this is either a 20 or a 21. Signatory's North British 28 (1991) (17/23) showcases a lot more campfire and char though. That doesn't help me a ton here, but it does confirm for me that this in no way can be an 18 and it makes me lean away from a 19. OK, so this is definitely at least a 20. A very weird comparison, but Joseph Magnus (21/23) is more complex and balanced, but also more spicy. Overall, it's hard for me to say that I prefer this over the Magnus. Still, I found that the Magnus was on the high side of the 21 range. I can see this being a lower 21. Delord 25 (20/23) shows a lot of creosote in with its barrel and stuff, with mellow yet full flavors combining bitter and sweet in a natural way. The complexity and balance are lower in it. This is certainly funkier, but it's far more interesting and nuanced. I think that this is a 21. Although this didn't meet the perfect score bar that it really should have at this price, since opening it a couple of weeks ago, I've found that it has mellowed out and the campfire and char flavors have faded. There's a high chance that this achieves full marks after some amount of time aging in a partially full bottle.