The Whisky Guy Blog

Peat is an important component of Scotch whisky, giving distinct levels of smokiness to barley as it dries the grain.  Considering the vegetation that comprises peat died thousands of years ago, it’s perhaps the original recycled product.  Peat harvesting has been done for thousands of years for use as a heat source and a drying agent.

Highland Park is one of the few distilleries that harvests its own peat.  Cutting peat blocks out of a landscape that has seen human habitation for more than 5,000 years occasionally leads to more than just decayed vegetation coming out of the ground.

In 2006, a peat cutter noticed a lump of metal in one of his peat blocks.  Thinking little of it, he gave it to a co-worker to take home to clean it up that night.  The co-worker’s father asked to take a look at the object and noticed it seemed a bit unusual.  The father asked to take it to a colleague at Orkney College who was an expert in archaeology.  The next day, the archaeologist salivated over an extremely rare Bronze Age ceremonial axe head that had been ritually placed in the peat bog thousands of years earlier.  It’s currently on display at the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall.

Bronze Age axe head found in the Highland Park peat bog.

The deep past isn’t the only surprise Highland Park’s peat cutters face.  One day a few years ago, they paused their cutting when they heard the sound of metal on metal.  Distillery Manager Russell Anderson was sitting in his office when the peat team called, describing the object they found.  He laughed at their call and hung up on their practical joke.  They called back again. And again.  Finally, he started to take them seriously and rushed out to the bog for a look at their find.

No joke, they’d found a bomb.

The Orkney Islands saw German action in both World Wars, and was also a staging area for the U.K. military.  The bomb was likely from one of those eras, though a bomb squad from the mainland made sure people didn’t have too much time to inspect it.   They blew it up.

So, if you think Highland Park is a hard hitting whisky with an explosion of flavor, there is more to that assessment than meets the eye!

At some point, within the first five minutes of finding out I write about whisky, people inevitably ask me what my favorite whisky is.  As I’ve stated here many times before, I can honestly say the best whisky is the one you’re drinking when you stop and say, “I love this moment.”  I gave an impromptu whisky tasting in Caen, France last week, and I didn’t have much variety in whiskies with me, but the Laphroaig 10-year-old was perfect in that moment, with the gentle rain and the French music.

Highland Park produces one of the best single malts available.

Once I explain my thoughts about the best whisky, I always follow up with this: even though the best whisky is the one you’re drinking at a particularly fine moment, I always have several bottles of Highland Park 18-year-old in my cabinet.  Why several bottles? Well, it’s really so good I never want to be caught short of it.

With that in mind, I made the journey to Scotland’s Orkney islands last month to spend time talking with Highland Park Distillery Manager Russell Anderson and to tour the more than 200-year-old distillery that produces, in my opinion, the perfect dram in the 18-year-old.

The Orkney islands are an aberration for Scotland.  The island chain was in the Nordic realms until 400 some years ago, and even now it feels more like its own country in some ways because of that heritage.  Gaelic influence, which is readily felt in places like Islay or Skye, seems absent in Orkney except in the very vital area of whisky distillation.  The Orkney main island is surrounded by rugged waters that have time and again seen the impact of history, from Neolithic times and the 5,000 year old house remains at Skara Brae village to the submerged German WWI fleet in the Scapa Flow.

My goal was to learn less about epochs of time and more about the relatively short term time it takes to produce a good Highland Park: 12, 15, 18, 30 years or whatever it may be.  Island distilleries must be fairly independent and innovative with their processes due to their remoteness from the Scottish mainland.  When issues arise all they have are the resources at hand to utilize for their production.

For Highland Park (www.highlandpark.co.uk), those resources mean harvesting their own peat from land near their location in Kirkwall.  According to Russell, the peat is critical to Highland Park’s flavor profile.  They’ve experimented with other peat, even peat from elsewhere in the Orkneys, and the subtle differences in vegetation make for a major change in the end product.  So, for six months out of the year their peat cutting team is hard at work harvesting the catalyst for the distillery’s own floor maltings.

Cutting one’s own peat and doing one’s own maltings is not inexepensive for a distillery that produced 2.5 million litres last year.  However, Russell says he holds his own ground against any accountants who question those higher costs.

“It’s about maintaining quality and it’s quite an expensive product to produce,” he says.  “But, I’m absolutely convinced that the extra cost is critical for quality.”

A walk through the distillery seems like a walk through time, as the original stone buildings and cobblestone paths make Highland Park look like a living history museum.  Despite being on a relatively remote island far removed from any major city, Highland Park receives thousands of visitors every year.  Most know and love the malt, which makes their visit a pilgrimage of sorts.  I have to say, I felt the same way.

“I still to this day find it extremely humbling for people to come from all over the world to see the distillery. It’s my day job,” Russell says.

Each Highland Park expression has a different balance of Orkney peatiness, barley maltiness and fermented sweetness.  For me, and for Russell, the 18-year-old is the perfect culmination of that balance.  The 18-year-old uses a higher percentage of sherry casks than younger offerings to bring a spicy sweetness to the marriage of oak and peat.  Put simply, everything is right with the 18-year-old.  Nothing can make it any better, and every time I have a sip I have the same amazed reaction.

Russell and his team work very hard to keep Highland Park’s 210-year-old tradition of excellence strong.  For a distillery with such a large output, there is considerable care and attention to detail in the production process.  The result is a whisky that is produced in enough quantity to reach discriminating consumers around the world and is delivered with enough quality to keep them coming back for more.

After long last, I am comfortably at my new home for the foreseeable future: Islay, the Scottish island of the peated malts.  My arrival here brings my whisky experience full circle in some ways, as it was Fergus Hartley, formerly of Bowmore, who took the time to give me a personal tasting introduction to Scotch several years ago that drew me into this wonderful world.

Bowmore was the first distillery I stopped in after I arrived, and I enjoyed a fantastic distillery-only release that was reminiscent of holiday spices and aromas like pine, nutmeg and cinnamon.  I was there briefly, just stopping in to stay warm during a short visit to Bowmore for lunch and groceries.  I’ll get more details about the malt and post them after my next visit.

Currently, I am at the home of the renowned whisky writer/gourmet Martine Nouet.  Like several others who are passionate about whisky, Islay called to Martine for many visits and eventually a home.  With views of two distilleries and Ireland on a clear day, her place is a magnificent location for enjoying a dram, along with her wonderful cooking. 

I am finally settling into island life and over the course of the next couple of weeks look forward to visiting some of the distilleries, renewing old acquaintances and making new friends.  And, of course, tasting a wide range of malts to share with you.

I’m often asked what my favorite whisky is, and I always reply it’s the whisky you’re drinking at the time you’re enjoying the moment.  It’s true.  Take, for example, the whisky I had the other night.

Though I’m in India, I brought half a dozen minis with me to enjoy at various points along the way.  A mini is basically a dram, give or take a little.  A couple of nights ago, I was sitting around a campfire along the Ganges River, having just enjoyed a delicious Indian meal prepared especially for me.  I was the only visitor at the Himalayan River Runners private camp and enjoyed a great day of whitewater rafting the Ganges, along with my Nepalese guides and a lad from Manchester, England - Eamon.

Eamon, Vijay (the head of the camp) and I were around the fire chatting about drinks (ranging from whiskies to homemade Nepalese concoctions), when I decided it would be an ideal moment to break out one of my minis - the largest I had, which would give each of us a fair taste.

I chose a relatively unknown whisky from Wales - Penderyn - which the great whisky writer Jim Murray originally turned me onto a couple of years ago.  The sweet, nutty, slightly spicy malt complimented the curry meal we’d just finished.  Soon after starting our sipping, we were offering personal observations about life, family, relationships, and that big-ass rapid that nearly tipped our raft a few hours earlier. 

Do I rush out to buy Penderyn whenever I can?  Though I enjoy it, I can’t say I do.  But for one evening, sitting around a campfire, three men from quite different parts of the world found it to be an unbeatable malt.  And no whisky will ever be better in that moment than Penderyn.

I am pleased to welcome you my very own Web site devoted to my passion for whisky.  As many of you know, I shall be traveling abroad the next few months, and this site will allow you to follow my whisky-related experiences along the way.  While the blog won’t hit its stride until I move to the island of Islay off the coast of Scotland after the first of the year, I will still provide appropriate whisky updates during my time in India.  Yes, there is whisky in India, and I’m excited to tell you all about it.

My blogs will be far more than just musings about whisky.  As you may know from my columns, I tend to talk a little about whisky and a lot about…well, whatever else crosses my mind.  I have links to two of those columns on this site.  Unfortunately, I don’t have pdfs of the rest of my columns, which are boxed away in a storage unit in Los Angeles. 

Before I sign off (and rush to my flight to Delhi) I want to offer a sincere and boundless thanks to the boys at Dragonfly Design Group for this wonderful site.  I’ve worked with these guys on a number of projects through the years, and they are brilliant at taking broad ideas and making them into visual masterpieces.  My words and photos are their paint.  I love how they blend them into what you see before you.

Stay tuned to this site for what will hopefully be an entertaining and educational journey through all things whisky. Or is it whiskey? Dig around the site and find out!