I had a bottle of the 18y Viking Pride and wanted to see if it is really necessary to buy that when you can save 30 Euros when going for this only 2 years younger version. It is not a viking theme expression this time but instead part of the animal-themed line. Also as far as I know this is one of the higher ABV Highland Park bottlings with its weird 44,5% ABV. Even the 18y only has 43%. Nose: delicious, fruity, red apples and grapes, mild peat that is not very intense at all but still characteristic. Milk- and white chocolate, a bid briny as well, ripe pineapple, vanilla cookies, a bid of banana and nice red currant on top of everything. Palate: very delicious and now very signature Highland Park, salty and not sweet in the same way as its bigger brother, some sour dried orchard fruits, marzipan Finish: very nice as well, quite dry, very oaky, intense dry spices with some smoke, prunes but again not sweet but more acidic and a little hot. Later ground coffee. The palate afterward gets richer and surprisingly oily sweet (the 18y didn’t have that from what I remember) while the finish becomes even more deep yet still opposing drier. So in conclusion: the regular 18y is a tad better and probably worth the extra money if you like HP in general. I don’t want to put my finger on it but I wanna assume they used 2nd or 3rd fill sherry casks instead - maybe even the ones they used for the 18y before. Who knows. Or they gave it a lot less time in the finishing casks or used bigger ones. So if you just want the occasional HP experience this one fulfills that purpose for sure. If you are a fan though you will miss some intensity that the 18y delivers better. I still like it. I will give the 12y another go soon and then decide for myself which will be the permanent HP shelf bottle. (I’m still very much interested in the Triskelion and The Dark but they are another league price-wise. But I am curious how those compare.)