Highland Park Valknut

Smells prune Taste slight smoke raisins

Really nice offering from Highland Park. Like the 12, but a bit more smokey and much sweeter. Lots of fruit there too.

The nose is rich and smokey with sweet toffee and vanilla. The palate has a lot of stale bread with some grass and not as much sweetness as expected. It's fairly drying. The smoke helps to balance the flavor a bit while the peat hinders that balance. The spice does nothing either way. There are some good flavors in here, but they are unfortunately eclipsed by the gross bread. This could be good if the peat were cut way back, but the sweetness is nice, especially with the toffee and vanilla (the hints of cherry are interesting, but not great). All told, this needs some flavors that marry a little better and the drop the gross bread. Aside from those issues, there is a lot of complexity and the flavors are very good. Fortunately, the gross bread quickly is dominated by the iodine from the peat and is eventually overpowered by the general peat and smoke on the finish. Among gross bread Scotches, this is a surprising success!

Green apples on the nose. Green grapes on the taste. Peat comes forward on the finish, which is very warming.