Reviews

Highland Park 12-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Review
Photo credit Edrington

Photo credit Edrington

The entry level in Highland Park’s core lineup is their 12-year-old expression.  It is a single malt comprised of a blend of whiskies aged in first and refill ex-Oloroso sherry casks.  From the color (I’m assuming they are not adding a lot of caramel color here, if any.) and taste of the whisky, refill casks make up the majority of this blend.  Highland Park Dark Origins, the newest member of the distillery’s core lineup, uses twice the amount of first-fill sherry casks.  It’s bottled here in the United States at 43% abv.

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Highland Park Dark Origins Single Malt Scotch Review
Photo courtesy Edrington Group

Photo courtesy Edrington

This past July at Tales of the Cocktail, I had a chance to speak with Stephanie Ridgway, brand manager for Highland Park.  Our conversation covered the “dark” history of the distillery, age statements, and Highland Park Dark Origins, the distillery’s newest addition to their core lineup.  The name of the whisky is a nod to how the distillery came to be founded.  Let’s kick off a short Highland Park series with what I learned from that fascinating conversation and a review of Highland Park Dark Origins.

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Booker’s Bourbon – Batch 2015-04 “Oven Buster” Review

Phot courtesy Jim Beam

Booker’s is one of my favorite whiskies from Jim Beam.  Better yet, it’s one of my favorite barrel-proof bourbons, period.  The fourth batch of Booker’s, “Oven Buster”, is here.  Picked from a roundtable of whiskey writers and experts, batch 2015-04 is also the year’s youngest release.  This one is aged 6.5 years and arrives at a respectable 127 proof.

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