Official Bottling | 40% ABV

The ‘T-Word’

No, this is nothing to do with ‘terroir’ and this isn’t an article prompted by the news that Waterford Distillery called in the receivers last week. Make no mistake, the demise of Ireland’s only scotch distillery is brutal news for whisky.

Before I comment too much, I’ll wait until they’ve had a chance to reflect a little longer. Everything I’ve read so far points fingers at the challenges they faced and poor timing; it wasn’t their fault; they’re victims. Interest rates, inflation and a pandemic foiled their plans.

Absolutely nothing about an arrogant tone of voice, odd branding, market saturation, confusing ranges or lack of a defined core product, clumsy positioning and overly premiumised pricing. Maybe that reflection will come, but there’s a little of all of that in the mix that brought about the current state of affairs at Waterford, and it all needs to be picked over. 

There are real people and lost jobs involved and things will be made worse at the end of a tough year for everyone. I’ll also risk stating that I hope this isn’t the end of Reynier and his disruptive qualities. He’s difficult, but consider that the transparency we enjoy today from Bruichladdich is widely attributed to his belligerence and convictions of his team; when Bruichladdich relaunched they were the only Islay distillery following natural policies.

I also have it on good authority that the reason the Ardbeg 10yo is fully natural and 46% (at launch they were peddling their 17yo at 40%) was, in part, his doing while in development talks with then owners Glenmorangie.

Whisky, like any industry, needs outspoken challengers who love it. He is certainly that, although it’s usually best if they don’t operate unchecked in a silo.

I still have a Waterford somewhere waiting for review, so perhaps it’ll all come in time. I think it’d be distasteful to review one of their whiskies right now. If you’re interested, it’s the Cuvée and I quite like it.

But no, this is about Highland Park and its brand new pyjamas.

There’s a continued, but accidental, theme to Dramface this week. It seems everyone’s been thinking about age statements and their relevance, and we’re asking ourselves: do they really matter?

Firstly, I could go on another tangential rant altogether about the subjective difference between age and maturity, but for today we’ll keep it just on the topic of objective age.

In 2024, I think we’re pretty comfortable with a lack of age statements in many of the contemporary releases of today. We can perhaps sweep some generalisations around and say that - for us whisky botherers at least - age statements don’t matter as much as they once did. But why?

Because, when it comes to the age of a particular whisky - let’s be clear - it should absolutely, unequivocally matter.

As long as I’ve cared enough about whisky to do more than simply consume it, I’ve been aware of at least one constant from my fellow enthusiasts; something that’s been unwavering and relentless throughout whisky’s growth in recent decades. I’m speaking of a push for something that unites almost everyone, yet somehow seems to be forgotten, time and time again, with too many new releases. That thing is, today’s t-word: transparency.

It has transcended every other development or discussion in whisky; a simple desire to know a little more, to understand the hows and whys. And before anyone suggests it’s just the invested enthusiasts and geeks who need all the fine detail, I need to push back a little and say no, not at all.

I could head down myriad avenues with this one: wildly varying bottling strengths without explanation, some bottles which boldly declare their maturation casks in celebration, while others mention nothing apart from nonsensical fluff such as ‘hand selected’, ‘the finest’, or the redundant staple: ‘special reserve’. Worst of all, I’d suggest, is a lack of any declaration - whatsoever - that many bottles are dosed with the putrid substance known as spirit caramel, which is a romantic name for chemically produced lies.

But I’ll try to stay focused and keep it to age - for today.

Let’s place ourselves as a fly-on-the-wall in a specialist retailer perhaps, or supermarket, travel retail environment or what-have-you. Imagine there’s no staff on hand for guidance. Imagine a beginner, or someone in search of a gift, or tomorrow’s potentially invested flavour chaser; all armed with nothing more than labels and wits.

As they stand in front of their chosen selection today, it is absolutely not obvious why some expressions are age stated and others are not. It’s even more confusing when you try to make a correlation between age and price. As they scan the endless word-wank of the labels and cartons, there’s little in the way of hard facts to help our newbie with defined stats and differentiators. Hardly seduced by this generic blandness, they choose based on price, or pretty. In a fug of uneasy optimism and ignorance, they plod off to the checkout to roll the dice.

Inevitably, they’ll buy the oldest they can afford.

That age statement is a hard anchor for people operating on minimal knowledge and there’s a reason that single digit age statements are rarely seen, especially at the higher end of the market. A fancy name, pretty art and a story of what supposedly inspired this ‘rare’ whisky’s creation is preferable to declaring ‘there’s some five year old liquid in here’.

With newer distilleries, or those focused more on craft presentation, or working exclusively with mostly younger spirit, the motivations are different. And unfortunately it matters not that they’ve made their whisky to an entirely different philosophy. Despite no homogenisation shackles, no demands on adherence to production methods designed to ensure efficiency and consistency, they remain bound by the exact same labelling rules. Thus, in most cases, it’s better not to mention an age at all.

There are exceptions, such as Ardnahoe’s 5 year old Inaugural and Wolfburn’s 7 year old Cask Strength as well as some small batch releases, but with very few in the double digit realm, we’re attracted to these for reasons other than their stated age, and they may struggle to justify their cost if judged by less aware punters relying purely on label age vs shelf-edge price.

So, they present what the large legacy producers have normalised over the years: non-age-statement or NAS. Okay, but do we actually think a little more transparency would actually help?

Let’s think a little and, as we do, remember everything about Dramface is from the perspective of the buying public, so that’s our angle here.

Scotch whisky is built upon an idea that ‘older’ is more desirable. That’s somewhat true in a notional sense and the concept is not a new thing.

The word ‘old’ has been used to sell whiskies forever. It’s been prevalent since before the beginning of scotch whisky marketing. The branded bottling genesis was Usher’s Old Vatted Glenlivet (OVG), 175 years ago. It seems whisky has always leant upon age and, when there was no age statement of note, you could guarantee the phrase ‘fine old’ had been deployed.

We’ve long understood, at least the 1700s, even before the days of Elizabeth Grant’s account of George IV’s visit to Scotland in 1822, that whisky, left for a while in an oak cask, was a very desirable thing. The spirit is mellowed and tamed in ways we’ve really only come to understand since.

It wasn’t just about selling a higher quality product, or a better flavour experience either. Apparently, it was also once thought that young whisky got you drunk quicker.

The legislation for maturing whisky - for three years minimum, in oak casks, in order for it to be ‘old enough’ to be called whisky - isn’t as long-established as we might think.

During the First World War it was ironically put in place by the - abstinent - Chancellor of the time, David Lloyd George. Pushing for total prohibition - yes, we came close to that swivel-eyed, anti-human madness - what was at first intended to prevent the cheatery of adding raw grain spirit to bulk out cheap ‘blends’, ended up being a pretty compelling quality control measure. Far from the intention of inflicting damage on the whisky-making industry, it would instead go on to elevate the reputation of scotch for evermore.

So, what exactly was the problem with these ‘cheap blends’? Well, additional motivations here were the not insignificant factors of a war, with most prone to seeking out a little too much of the cheap stuff as a distraction. Conflating alcohol abuse, unfathomable horror abroad, poverty at home and reducing perceived out-of-control drunkenness by the great unwashed, we’ve had the three year rule in force since the Immature Spirits Act of 1915. 

At the stroke of a pen, ‘whisky’ became not that which flows from a still, but that which pours from an oak cask.

These actions would forever define the notion of whisky as an ‘aged in wood’ spirit, wherever it’s made. Henceforth, how long it spends in that oak cask has been deemed critical to its value.

But we know so much more today. We understand so much more today. With the sheer variety and varying quality of cask profile, style, flavour, scale and raw ingredients; comparing two whiskies while using age alone is unfathomably flawed.

What we need to make everything a lot more understandable is the ability to share the facts, via the product itself. It might not be advantageous to Glasgow distillery to label its latest 1770 as 6 years old, but if Macallan also had to declare the age of its latest Night on Earth edition, I’m pretty sure things would find focus.

I think we’re at a point, today, where there’s room to revisit those SWA definitions.

The guidance of only stating the youngest component, originally designed to prevent the consumer being misled, isn’t particularly fit for purpose in today’s whisky landscape. Of its time, it’s designed for mass-market releases at scaled volume and actively restricts producers who want to tell actual stories and truths about what’s in the bottle.

The interest for growth is in the curiosity, the variety, the recipe; contemplation over consumption; quality over quantity. The dynamics have moved on; creativity and market readiness have encouraged them and moved too, but the guidance has not. 

This is not at the feet of any specific producer, although I don’t doubt that many are quietly grateful that their reasoning for a lack of transparency can be that they’re ‘not allowed to say’. It seems convenient, at times, that undesirable truths can be obfuscated behind the thinnest veil of perceived quality control.

The less information made available, the easier it is to imply the most expensive is the best. Profit is the goal and ignorance is the target.

I’m not of the mood that every bottle should have all the details on the back showing the exact make-up, but perhaps there’s an argument that every release states its minimum age somewhere on the label? Perhaps, producers who simply list the components are not punished for, or prevented from, doing so.

Suggesting for a friend. Food for thought. Because when active steps are taken to prevent transparency, it plays into the kind of cynicism that ironically weakens quality control.

Transparency matters because we want to understand how whisky tastes the way it does. And it matters because three year old whisky has the potential to taste every bit as good as any other, and we’d love to unlock why.

It matters because we really love whisky and all of its trappings, but there are occasional charlatans out there and we’d like to see their ID before we hand over our frighteningly hard-to-come-by cash.

Review

Highland Park 12yo, 2024 rebrand, official bottling, natural colour, 40% ABV
£45 paid for the new look livery, but older bottles are as low as £25 on offer.

Anyway, here we have a bottle that’s been doing its thing for forty years, the solid and dependable Highland Park 12 year old.

For as long as it has existed, it has been made up of liquid that is - at least - 12 years old. No mention of how much liquid was included that was ever older than that but, in my twenty years of sipping this whisky, it has changed - like every one of its peers - yet it remains a safe harbour when we find ourselves out and about. 

All have changed over the years; ‘12 years old’ is not what it once was. To use this as an example: at the turn of the century it was joined by its 15 and 18 year old official stablemates, quite a bit more expensive. Soon after it was joined by lucrative 21 and 25 year old releases that rocketed in RRP each new release, soon breaching the four-figure mark. Mature whisky found its value and how. A lot less of it was made available to enhance vattings for those modest twelves. 

However, it could be argued that, along with Johnnie Walker Black Label, Glenfiddich and Glenlivet, this bottle was seen as part of the justification for thinking that the ‘good stuff’ started at 12 years old.

This is the new look bottle and when it landed, as is typical with new branding, everyone glitched. I was nonplussed. I was never a real fan of Highland Park’s aesthetic, but it got worse for me with all the embossed fussiness of its viking-inspired era, which I’m kind of glad to see the back of.

In this new make-up things are perhaps a little more plain and simple, but it’s classier. I kinda like it. More than anything, it looks and feels much more like scotch whisky. Not an essential, but I felt at times - with dragons, tattoos and all manner of things to die in honour of - Highland Park could take on the vibe of a flavoured night club liqueur.

Apologies if this reads like I spend a lot of time contemplating the branding of whisky, in truth I spend more time searching for the right emoji. 

These new togs come with all sorts of rumours: that the new target market is Asia and this visual is more suited to such, but also that Edrington are planning to dress it up for sale.

I’m not so sure. I know they’ve just sold The Famous Grouse to Wm Grants and they’re moving to premiumise the crap outta everything, but Macallan are not quite that skint, surely. I’d imagine them losing The Glenrothes before they’d part with Orkney’s star. Then again, they’ve often played Monopoly trading games with their brands, so you never know.

Anyway, this new look is preferable to my eye and I predict that, if you’re put off by its new vanilla debranding, you’ll warm to it when it’s in your hand. It came with a box, which was nice enough, but it landed in the recycling instantly, on crimes of lacking transparency, before the bottle even hit the shelf.

I should also confess that, over my years of over-accumulation of whisky, there are a few bottles that have been on hand - virtually permanently so - since day one. This 12 year old is one of them. I’ve owned every branding with the exception of the old screen printed 1980s bottles.

Besides, don’t you think Dramface should occasionally visit the entry level side of things - at least once in a while? Whether that’s the age statement, the positioning, price or presentation, I think we certainly should. How can we judge if we don’t try?

And I’m often surprised by just how good this wee 12yo can still be compared to those peers.

Up until you sip it alongside anything 46%+ and natural, that is. So, for this review, I choose not to.

Instead, I poured it alongside the dregs of my old (Viking!) bottling and a couple of other competing 40% efforts.

Nose

Plenty of stuff.

Very floral and honeyed. Lemon Pledge furniture polish and soft citrus. The honey is dark with charred orange peel, a little smoke and a lot of oak. Mulch. Piles of damp leaves and moss. There was a time this would have been pretty smoky to my early and more sensitive schnoz. Now I need to go looking for it. Covering it for a bit brings light, aromatic smoke out, as does the dry, empty glass.

Palate

Familiar.

It has a decent and reasonably oily arrival for its watered-down state. The honey notes lead with floral orange blossom and dark beeswax, and that wood polish thing again. More citrus peel and pith; orangey and lemony-sweet. A little barbeque too, with meats and a fattiness. I search for the smoke and convince myself I’ve found it. The finish is flooded by oak and a little off-kilter bitterness. Still, there is a lot to find.

Because it’s Highland Park, I’m searching for that suggested heather note. Which I find, of course, but defining what makes it heather is beyond me. Let’s just say there’s a definite ‘Highland Park’ note to things.

I should mention: on a short trip to Croatia this year I was blasted with orange blossoms heading through the gates to Dubrovnik Old Town, and the scent was nothing like I imagined. When I say ‘orange blossom’ I’m quite wrong in meaning a sweet, orange-y citrusy, floral scent. In actuality it smelt like fresh baby wipes.

The Dregs

This pour holds its own against the Singleton and the Macallan, which are brighter and silkier respectively. The Singleton has a whiff of emulsified colourant about it, yet drinkable; the Macallan is a decent pour. You’d choose based on mood but, if you cared about money in the slightest, you’d never have the Macallan near your shelves.

The Balvenie Doublewood is an absolute star at 40%; quite remarkable, actually, although also creeping up in price. I must doff a cap to the consistency of the HP when held against the older branding of the 12yo. Despite the fact the older pour was a touch sweeter and far less of a green oak vibe; it has been open for a long time with only the dregs remaining.

If you dwell on the score I’ve levelled at this 12yo, it’s unlikely you’ll splash your cash on a bottle. But, especially if you pick it up at a good price (this will be discounted in time), I think, actually, you should. Glenlivet and Glenfiddich are shadows of their former selves, Old Pulteney’s ubiquitous 12 is unrecognisably poor. But this is, actually, not a bad thing to have hanging around. 

The old branding is around £35, often less, while this new livery requests a tenner more, for now. Either is decent. I’d suggest £45 is too expensive for what’s in my glass, however that hasn’t affected my score today; everyone should be able to grab HP12 much cheaper. That said, I’d rather pick up a Bunnahabhain 12yo, a Glasgow Original, an Ardnamurchan AD, a Deanston 12yo, a Glencadam 10yo or any of the other more naturally presented bottlings we have today and, as I do so, I might wonder about that transparency thing… 

If a producer could tell us anything on the back label, without restriction of what they’re allowed to say, what would they choose to tell us, actually?

I imagine it would depend entirely on who they are and who their markets are, but I bet it would follow a lot like it does today.

Natural and proud would continue to be written bold and loud. Whereas those who’d choose the route of less information would unintentionally speak louder.

Comparing a modern, boutique or ‘craft-style’ whisky made with heritage grains, brewer’s yeast, extended fermentations or playful casks against larger scale legacy marques, using only age statements, is not meaningful. Better understanding and education is required; transparency - and removing barriers to transparency - can only help that.

When it comes to splashing cash on whisky we want to drink and enjoy, ignorance is not bliss. Age might not matter like it once did, but not necessarily because young whiskies have become better at assuring us they’re worth it.

Instead, in 2024, I think the healthy age statements of the old guard have actually become less of an assurance that they are worth it.

Score: 5/10

Tried this? Share your thoughts in the comments below. WMc

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