Highland Park unveils 50-year-old whisky
2021/03/31
50-year-old whisku made from nine refill casks laid down in 1968.
Limited to 274 bottles, the new Highland Park 50 Year Old (43.8% ABV) is made from nine refill casks laid down in 1968.
The casks were combined in 2008 and re-racked into first-fill Sherry-seasoned casks.
The bottlings were created using the traditional solera system, which takes a small quantity of whisky produced from a previous batch and marries it together with the new liquid. After 12 years of maturation, one cask was chosen and a small quantity of the last 50-year-old from the distillery was added. Gordon Motion, Highland Park’s master whisky maker, said: “This 50-year-old whisky is one of our oldest and rarest releases and I’m very proud to have been a part of its journey.
“The whisky is spectacular, when I sampled the whisky from the re-racked casks, the whisky it contained – aged for a little over 50 years – had absorbed the rich Sherried flavours of dried fruit and sweet toffee from its final first-fill cask maturation, but still retained all the delicate fragrance and flavours driven by the original refill casks.“I introduced a small quantity of this cask to some of our 2018 batch of 50 Year Old, which I’d held back specifically for this purpose, to create a further layer of depth and complexity.
“As the 2018 50 Year Old also contains some of our 2010 batch of 50 Year Old – our first in the series…
Source: The Spirits Business by Nicola Carruthers on March 25, 2021