Highland Park Single Cask 1674 Sweden exclusive – Vintersolståndet

Dear friends and followers alike! About two weeks ago I worked the Borlänge Beer and whiskyfestival for Edrington (my second time working this very cosy festival). To my great joy I discovered that we had a coming Highland Park Single Cask with us, yay! Luckily for me, I was given permission to try it right then and there, and below you will find my tasting notes.

But first some info: this is the fourth single cask released for Sweden (since the new single cask series began in the fall of 2016, not counting the one for SMAD). The whisky is 15 years old (2001/2017), the number of the cask is 1674, a refill sherry butt (in the case of HP meaning 2nd-fill), yielding 552 bottles in total. For reasons which you can read about here I do not know, and probably never will know, if the cask is made of european oak or american oak. 59 % is the ABV and 534 bottles will be released in Sweden at the state monopoly the day after tomorrow, in a so called web release. You can view the product by clicking here. 

What about the strange Swedish name of this SC-bottling?! "Vintersolståndet" simply translates into Winter solstice. Ok, let's see what we have here!

Nose:

A medium peatyness meets my nose. The peatyness has elements of a kind of burnt sugar-y touch, there is also a lot of medium dark honey and very sweet vanilla fudge-yness going on around the peatyness, mmm… In the center of the nose (”the very top register of the palate” as I usually put is) there is definitely a touch of peated lemon peal, in fact, smoked lemon peal. Finally, surrounding everything is a sweet, round, and very calm scent of light (liquid) honey, very signature for Highland Park

Taste:

Hoding the whisky in my mouth for just a couple of seconds, the whisky starts off very sugar-y sweet/syrup, but it moves very quickly (one second) into salty-ness, not sea salt, rather like salt liquorice. When swallowing I can really feel the ”alcohol vapours” rising in the roof of my mouth bringing with it a mix of old leather, sackcloth, and slightly burnt grass… it all vapours away quite cuickly to be taken over by light peat, peated coffee, peated lemon peal, some moutdrying vanilla, full-fat unwhipped cream at room temperature, and some more slightly burnt grass… residing in my mouth and on my tongue in the aftertaste there is a heather sweetness slowly being taken over by a very, very faint touch of orange flavoured milk chocolate.

To sum up:

In comparison with the previous HP SC for Sweden that I’ve tasted so far, that is the 6403 and the 2121, from memory, I would definitely rank this one as coming in on a second place after 6403. Considering that 6403 is 1st-fill sherry european oak (a hogshead), this is a very good ranking for being a refill sherry butt! Big thanks to the people at Edrington for the chance to review this one and to be able to taste it before its release, Sláinte!

Please make sure to follow my FB-page by clicking here, my instagram by clicking here and my twitter-page by clicking here. Copyright © and All Rights Reserved on all tasting notes and text by SamuelWhisky and pictures likewise belong to SamuelWhisky, unless stated. If you would like to use any material that belongs to SamuelWhisky or associated with SamuelWhisky, please ask by sending me an email to samuelkarlssonorebro[at]gmail.com and by stating the source