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Day 1 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - Signatory Orkney (HP) 18 Year Old

Posted on December 4, 2024

Day 1 - Signatory Orkney HP 18 Year

By Evan

Here we are! It is finally time to break into our stripped down (for your pleasure) 2024 KWM This is Not An Advent Calendar! After months of trials and tribulation and assorted nonsense with getting this all put together and built, we can now start tearing all of this hard work apart. Our KWM staff put a lot of work in rushing to get these all ready - so thank you to Harmony, Sammy, Curt, Nataliia, Shawn, Chris, Terry, Andrew, Eli, Geoff, Hannah, Marnie, Connie, Marty, and Rachael for making this happen. Andrew as always put in a lot of hours in sourcing the graphics and bottles and making this all happen, and Harmony did a tremendous amount as well in making sure it all was built to spec.

Now it is up to you and I to take up the incredibly gruelling task of discussing and tasting all of these drams!

But first, let's start with a brief overview of the whisky calendar tasting kit series in front of you. Its creation is a bit of a long story, which I will attempt and fail to make short due to my love for words and an inflated self-importance over the things that I write. Here is a bit of background:

For the 2022 Whisky Calendar and those we had built in years prior to that, we had chosen to select and source pre-made mini bottles of whisky from a variety of whisky companies and importers. We curated the lineup, but we could only include whisky that was available in this format.

Last year, for our 2023 Whisky Calendar, we broke the mould that we had used for nearly a decade. We did something we had started doing during Covid. Back in December 2021, the AGLC published rules which allowed for sample bottles to be poured and used for tasting purposes. It limited the size of sample poured to a maximum of ½ oz or 28ml poured in the case of spirits. That was fine by us, because that was the amount we poured for in store tastings, and it allowed us to start offering virtual tastings on the regular. We decided to build our 2023 Whisky Calendar into a tasting set because of this as well. We already had been doing 5 day recap tastings since the 2022 whisky calendar anyhow, so there was no change there. Pouring our own tastings samples for the Whisky Calendar allowed us to fully take the reins on what we sourced for the Calendar as well. We no longer had to rely on what was available or could be filled by companies into the mini bottle format, making it a completely KWM curated list of whisky.

That went incredibly well, up to the point where we received flack for the 2023 Whisky Calendar being a product and not a series of tastings. Back to the drawing board for 2024 then!

And here we are. There is no doubt what you have in front of you is Not an Advent Calendar. It is a series of tastings. It even says so on the box. So, hopefully you are here to join us in celebrating our way through this 5 tasting series that amounts to 25 bottles total. Or, perhaps you purchased just one or two of the tasting kits, and you want to read about their contents before joining us for the virtual tasting. Either way, lets jump in with Day Number One's bottle.

Say hello to the Signatory Orkney (HP) 18 Year Old!

What is in this bottle before us? We always try to make a statement with Day 1’s bottle. Instead of starting soft and easy drinking before we build up to the cask strength in the days to come, it is much for fun to dive head first into something big and bold. That is exactly what we are going today, thanks to this 18 year old bottling of Highland Park. This isn’t the usual Highland Park 18 though; instead this is a single Sherry Butt of Highland Park bottled at a very respectable 55%.

Highland Park Distillery is one of two operating whisky distilleries on the Orkney Islands. The other is Scapa, which like Highland Park resides on the largest island in the Orkneys. Highland Park resides in the town of Kirkwall. Scapa is about a 5 minute drive to the south on the town's outskirts and nearer the coastline.

For a long time I considered Highland Park 12 and 18 to be benchmark drams. Along with Lagavulin 16, the Arran 10 and 14 (Rest in peace, Arran 14. Know that you are missed!), and a few others. I always enjoy trying something new and different, but those were the bottles that I was always certain I could pick up at a decent price and be happy with the seldom changing, consistent liquid within.

(Above - an expert noser checking to see if the latest bottling of Highland Park 18 is up to snuff. These new bottles haven't reached our shores yet, but based on the more minimal look they seem to contain less over the top Vikingography than prior batches.)

Time and pricing has changed my view on some of these bottles. Quality and style are bound to change - event if it is minutely – from batch to batch. Nostalgia is probably the guilty factor here, but the venerable HP 18 was not as I remembered it from decades past. The style of sherry cask it uses maybe is the culprit, or perhaps it just comes down to rose tinted glasses ruining my 20/20 hindsight. What is certain is that the price for a bottle of Highland Park 18 Year Old has unfortunately skyrocketed over the past decade. I remember being upset when it was more than $180 on the shelf. As I write this, it is now well past $300. Whiskyflation – I curse you!

Luckily there are plenty of bottles of mature HP Sauce available if you know what to look for. If you find a label that says “Secret Orkney” then you can be fairly confident that Highland Park was the distillery in question. The fact that this bottle in front of us has (HP) in brackets clinches it. I am fairly certain that the whisky producing distillery in the Orkneys (Scapa) does not have those to letters in its name.

What makes Highland Park Distillery special? For myself and many others it is the combination of orchard fruit-driven malt and a heathery peat note that can range from soft and ethereal to big, spicy and smoke driven. With single casks of Highland Park you are never quite sure which way that peat is going to run until you try it, and that is likely thanks to the two types of barley the distillery ferments and distills.

Highland Park sources unpeated malt for much of its production but also has its own floor maltings, where the barley is peated to a moderately high 30 to 40 PPM. Thanks to the volume of spirit Highland Park producing easily outstripping its ability to be sustained by its own malting floors, the peated malt only accounts for about 1/5th of what is used in production. The resulting peat level of most Highland Park whisky is much lower than the 30 to 40 PPM mentioned, but the peat is still in there, somewhere…

Signatory Vintage, for it's part, is one of the best sources for great sherry casked whisky right now. The indie bottler was founded back in 1988 by Andrew Symington and his brother. The original idea behind the name was to get a celebrity to sign each bottle. I am kind of glad that concept didn't last. Andrew and Signatory purchased Edradour Distillery in 2002. Since then, Edradour and have slowly developed the plant from a quaint small tourist attraction with fair to but inconsistent whisky into a source for top-notch Scotch, both peated and unpeated.

Let's give this Signatory bottling of Highland Park a taste!

Signatory Orkney (HP) 18-Year-Old – 55%

Distilled in 2005. Cask number DRU17 A63 #29. One of 608 bottles for the world.

"These 18 year old sherry bomb Highland Parks have been a hit... we can't wait to see if this one lives up to expectations. Matured in a 1st Fill Oloroso Sherry Butt, this 2005 vintage Orkney single malt has been bottled after 18 years at 55.0%."

Evan’s Tasting Note

Nose: Apple pie, marmalade, salted caramel, dates and other dried fruits drizzled with honey, salty buttered biscuits fresh from the oven, a dash of balsamic vinegar, embers smouldering away in a campfire, and a distant note of brimstone.

Palate: More salted caramel and marmalade, almonds coated with chili lime seasoning, golden raisins, milk chocolate, orange pekoe tea with honey, plus slight oregano and basil herbal notes and again a distant fire and brimstone lead smoke.

Finish: Sweet and peppery heat with more coastal notes and a touch of dark chocolate and dried fruits on the fade.

Comment: Absolutely delicious. A fantastic combination of sweet and spicy notes melding together with an earthy, volcanic heat and coastal notes.

I talked about perennial/benchmark drams at the beginning of this post. I very much wish I could make this bottle one of them. It has blown me away each time I have tasted it. Sadly, as it is a single cask, it can never be such. You have to just sit back and enjoy the ride when you get a one-off or limited release that you fall in love with. Luckily, we should see at least a few more casks of Signatory Orkney (HP) in the future. Based on this, I believe they are worth watching out for.

There you have it! Day One’s whisky sample has been tasted! If you are joining us for the five day recap tastings, hopefully you managed to save some for that. If not, I know a place where you can hopefully get a full bottle of it, as long as it hasn’t sold out already!

See you tomorrow for Day Two’s sample dram!

Cheers,
Evan

Playing catch-up on our 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar?

You can find the rest of the blog posts here!

 

This entry was posted in Whisky, Whisky Calendars, Tastings - Online Tasting, KWM 2024 Not An Advent Calendar Tastings

 

 

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