Cornmuse
Highland Park 10 Year
Single Malt — Islands, Scotland
Reviewed
September 10, 2020 (edited August 27, 2022)
How about a wee dram?
This Highland Park 10 year single malt, single cask weighs in at a near unimaginable 129 proof!
This is from the single cask series and was selected for the Tampa Bay Whiskey Society.
In the glass this is the palest straw color. A swirl show thick sheeting with a few, slow tears.
The nose on this is particularly challenging. The alcohol gets in the way if your nose gets too close!
After an appropriate rest this is wonderfully floral, with notes of honey, white bread, iodine, and more. It's both complex and subtle.
First impression on the palate is sweet, and then it hits. The profile is giant! Technicolor! Everything from light peat smoke to wet wood, hard butterscotch candies, juicy fruit gum, clover, brine, and more is present.
When I purchased this at Gaspar's Liquor Shoppe in Tampa I was told a drop of water is a catalyst for excellence with this pour, so I added a 1/2 teaspoon of chilled, distilled water to my glencairn.
Yes!
The whole of it becomes more coherent. Grassy notes, honeysuckle, shortbread, ginger, clove and more make an appearance. This is a dram that rewards patience and studied examination
I'm gobsmacked by this whisky. It's awesome!
Definitely not a sip for every palate, and definitely not typical of a top shelf scotch, this is more like Godzilla took over a distillery and tossed everything from the town into the pot. And it works!
I rate from 1 to 5 with 5 being perfect. This isn't perfect, but it's damned good. Really, really damned good.
4.25/5
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+1 on everyone’s comment and suggestion. The author of the review can now consolidate into a summary and send a Feature request to the Distiller team ;-) sláinte!
@Cornmuse. In case anybody's looking, here's one more vote for combining various single barrels. As single barrels and barrel picks proliferate, it's only going to get more and more unwieldy without some consolidation.
@WhiskeyLonghorn oh dagnabbit! I shoplifted the idea LOL
@bigwhitemike if Rotten Tomatos can do that for movies, why not whisky?
@Cornmuse good review, sounds like a good dram, and good suggestion. Distiller could do with a consolidation of many of the special releases. There just isn’t much community value created by individual documentation of unobtainable one-offs. Barrel picks surely, but even yearly releases (BTAC) should have a “parent” rating for the series, then if folks felt like reviewing the “children” maybe you could dive deeper into the individual releases. Also would love to have a composite rating of multiple critic reviews to normalize some preferential anomalies. A guy can dream...
@cascode I agree but it's foolish to have a listing for EVERY barrel. I wish there was a listing for simply "cask series" without the specifics as it's unlikely we will get the same cask again. What's a guy to do?
@Cornmuse good review. I could sense that monster ABV oxidising from across the pond. @cascode valid point. I read your own review and the two experiences are quite different, which of course makes absolute sense given the significant gap in ABV between the two bottlings.
Nice review, but it would be better under it's own listing rather then here with the regular OB 10 year old. I can't imagine these two expressions have much in common.
Sounds impressive