Highland Park 10 Years Old (700 ml)

Highland Park traces its origins to 1798 on a hillside above Kirkwall, Orkney — a site so geographically isolated that its defining raw material, heather-peat hand-cut from Hobbister Moor (~7 miles southwest), cannot be substituted without fundamentally altering the whisky. Trials with mainland peated malt confirmed exactly that. Orkney's peat is shallow, tree-root-free, and dense with heather and fern, kilned to approximately 20 ppm phenol — producing aromatic floral smoke that is neither medicinal nor tarry, a character impossible to source elsewhere on earth.

Roughly 20% of annual malt is floor-malted on-site using traditional hand-turning, blended with ~80% unpeated mainland malt. Fermentation runs 50–80 hours in 12 Oregon pine washbacks (29,200 L each), and double distillation through low-reflux, pear-shaped stills yields a medium-heavy new make. The 10 Year Old matures exclusively in Oloroso-seasoned European and American oak casks — first-fill and refill — in 19 dunnage warehouses with earthen floors, where Orkney's cool, temperate maritime climate slows extraction and preserves freshness. Water is drawn from a hard-mineral spring on Mainland Orkney, unusual among Scotch distilleries and a quiet contributor to the spirit's texture. The result sits at 40% ABV, vatted and married before bottling to integrate the heather-smoke and sherry-fruit axes that define the house.