LOT ID: 0424-294
End Date : May 29 2024 08:00 PM
Highland Park 1977 - 2003. Scottish Field Merchant's Cask. Cask number 4258. One of 480 bottles. 70cl. 52.1%. No box.
From the same vintage as the distillery's famous Bicentenary bottlings, this 1977 Highland Park single cask was selected for bottling by a panel of luminaries including Richard Joynson, Keir Sword and Duncan Elphick following the distillery's triumph in the Scottish Field Merchants challenge in 2003. Just 480 bottles were yielded from the cask at a natural strength of 52.1%. One of the best HPs of the Noughties.
FILLING LEVEL
Lower Neck
One of Scotland’s greatest distilleries, Highland Park on the Orkney archipelago has a long and storied history. The distillery in Kirkwall was founded in the 18th century by either David Robertson or Magnus Eunson, the latter of whom was a famous smuggler churchman who hid casks of his whisky from customs men by stashing them under his pulpit. Highland Park distillery has been owned by the Edrington Group since 1999 and is famed for its lightly smoky character from its own peated floor-maltings, which make up around 20% of the barley used for distillation.
Official bottlings of Highland Park began around the end of the 1970s, marking the beginning of a remarkable run of core bottlings, with the famous slope-shouldered 12-year-old and 18-year-old OBs from the 1980s now highly sought after at auction, as are the 1990s editions of the official 25-year-old. Independent bottlings of Highland Park were once very rare but now appear relatively regularly, usually as Orkney or Whitlaw.
Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.
This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.
BID | DATE | TIME | |
---|---|---|---|
£625.00 | 29th May 2024 | 19:10 | |