Highland Park 1988-2010 - 21 Year Old - Carn Mor - Celebration Of The Cask - Single Cask 878

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.

Càrn Mòr is a series of independent bottlings from Morrison Scotch Whisky Distillers (MSWD), the family company run by Brian Morrison, the former chairman of Morrison Bowmore, and his son Jamie Morrison. The company also owns the Old Perth blended whisky brand and commenced distillation at their new Lowland distillery Aberargie in 2017.

The first Càrn Mòr whiskies were bottled in 2007/8 and the Morrisons keep up a prolific bottling schedule, with several hundred Càrn Mòr releases to date. As of 2023, Càrn Mòr have two main ranges, the Càrn Mòr Strictly Limited series of youngish small batch whiskies bottled at 47.5%, and the Càrn Mòr Celebration of the Cask series, the majority of which are much older single cask whiskies bottled at cask strength.