Highland park Kirkwall

Highland Park is famous for releasing a ton of single cask expressions, for airports, retail stores, online shops, etc. One of those expressions, is this "Kirkwall", which honours the site where the distillery is located in the Orkney Islands. An 11 year old bottle, at a very high strength, 64.5%abv, it is one of 598 decanters ever made. Copper color. On the nose, straight Gooseberries notes at the beggining. Green and purple prunes. A little bit of it spilled in my hand, and the aroma on my palm is a note of ashes. Very fruity, very soapy. There is a cocoa butter note. It is not powerful as you might expect for a 64.5%abv dram. Black coffee beans. After a first sip, some creamy chocolate has appeared. Coffee and cocoa. Milk powder. The nose is clearly the best part of this single malt. Caramel and toffee. On the palate, it starts too ashy, with a powerful acidity. Is like acid green prunes dipped in ashes. Way too powerful. A second sip gave me a thick, pleasant toffee block; bitterness is pleasant, but then an earthy water flavor appears which wasn't great. The acidity has been tamed on the third sip, it still is very tongue scorching. Aftertaste is all about burnt cigarrettes, burnt tobacco, overload of salt, burnt hay, burnt newspapers, everything burnt. Not unpleasant necessarily, not too enjoyable, but also not unbearable. It is like heaven for people who smoke, which is not my case. It feels exactly as smoking a bitter cigar. A little scorching on the sides of the tongue. Overall, this is an interesting whisky, but nothing too remarkable. I find Highland Park cask strength expressions to be way too raw and sometimes unpleasant. This is not bad at all, but it feels inmature and even if you can feel the HP DNA here, you can aknowledge that it needs more time on the barrel. My score for this dram is an 84 over 100.