Paul Thurott (129:37)
Yes. So the Shetland Islands, of course, are even farther in the Faro Islands, even farther than that. But the Orkneys are the ones relatively up close. They're actually a group of about 70 islands, of which only three are, are, you know, really big. The largest one's called Mainland, which is hilarious. Maybe 20, 000 people live total on the islands. Three quarters of them live on mainland, which is about 500 square kilometers. And there's only three towns across the whole set of islands that have more than 500 people in them. So it is very distributed there. The big town is Kirkwall. There's an overnight ferry from Aberdeen you can take, although there are other ferries, mostly just passenger ferries that come from great places like Scrabster and gills and John O'Groats which is all on Caithness, which is the northern part of the mainland of Scotland. Why are people there? Well, very fertile soils. Also an incredibly mild climate. The temperatures in the wintertime are about 4 degrees centigrade, maybe 39 Fahrenheit. And the highs in the, you know, summertime average about 12 degrees, only like 55. So it's never that cold and it's never that hot. Yeah, they dip below freezing sometimes, but the Gulf Stream keeps it pretty steady there. But the wind is constant. There are virtually no trees of any kind. But there's been people there for a really long time. They make more than their, their total power consumption, electricity. Even though they're connected to the mainland, they actually dumping electricity into Scotland for the most part. And they're far enough north north that at the summer stoles this. It doesn't get dark at night. They call it the simmerdim when that. When it gets that bright. So it. The. It's an island. The islands are about farming, mostly sheep and cattle. There's still some grain growing there, of course, there's lots of fishing. And then tourism is huge. Obviously took a blow during the pandemic, but it's already back in the swing. And that's Highland park is located up there. It's not the only distillery up there. There's also Scapa. And a couple of years ago the Dearness Distillery opened as well. Their big tourism attraction is Neolithic structures. So there's evidence that humans have been living on the Orkneys from as soon as the ice retreated back from there. So there's been artifacts found that are from 9,000 BC and there are standing buildings from 5,000 BC. So this is Mesolithic, not even Neolithic, like the Middle Stone Age. And then of course the Neolithic peoples, which were part of the Daggerlands and all of that area when they water was much lower because the ice was still retreating. And they were the megaliths, the folks who built standing stone structures. And there's a ton of them on the Orkneys. For as small as they are. The must see is like the ring of Brogdar, which is 90 or 60 standing stones in a ring. There's also the stones of Stennis, which includes the, the Odin stone, just in case you weren't sure. The Norse connects and Meshao. And of course I mentioned the Neolithic village that's in Scarabre and there are literally still standing. They were buried, you know, under sands and things. 5000 year old Neolithic homes. Absolutely worth the look. The Romans knew about the Orlands. They call them the Arcades or the Latin, which was actually derived from the earlier Celtic names before the Norwegians showed up. The name itself is kind of funny, the word orc. There's actually a Celtic word orc, which means pig. So there's a theory that the old name was the island of the Young Pigs. But then when the Picts take control of it for the most part after that, although occasionally the Gauls come through and then ultimately the Norse are in control by about 900 AD and the Orkneys were really the base of operations for the Nordic attacks throughout the UK islands for several hundred years. And of course the Norse word orc means seal. So suddenly it was the island of Seals, which the Orkneys have plenty of. And then finally, you know, as the Norse movements fade off, by the 1472, it's declared part of Scotland, like most of the rest of Scotland, and it's the kingdom of Scotland thereafter. So Highland park, as I mentioned, was near Kirkwall. It's just off the A961 if you want to drive there. It's in the southern part of the town. Highland park is not named for the Highlands of Scotland, which is on the mainland. It's actually named for High park, which is where it's located. So the grounds of Orkney are pretty low everywhere there's a few sandstone hills and things, but this one raised area south of Kirkland is called High park. And that's why it's called Highland Park. The actual origins of the place are kind of fun because it goes far enough back into the 1700s that the historical records are not great. My personal favorite version of it, many other people like it, is a character named Magnus Unison, which again, very Norwegian name, who was both a priest and possibly a butcher by day, but was also an illegal distiller and smuggler by night. And in the record of him existing comes from a. A criminal charge in 1798 of illegal distillering up in High Park. We really don't really hear about it much again, but that same location gets an official license as a distillery in 1826 by one Robert Borwick. Don't know if he was related or not. It's all getting a bit fuzzy. It was one. It was the. One of the very first legal distillery license issued certainly in the Orkneys, but in most of Scotland, 1826 was pretty early on. And for about 70 years it stays in the Borwick family through a couple of generations until it's eventually sold in 1895 to James Grant, and that's Glenn Livitt. So back in the Speyside and they continue to operate it, things get shuffled around for a few years. Towards the end of Prohibition in 1937, it's acquired by Highland Distillers. So Highland Distillers have been operating since the 18. Late 1880s, 1887 or so, and they operated the Bonhaven and the Glen Rothies distillery, which we talked about a few weeks ago. And Highland Distillers also acquired Glenn Glassau, Tam Do, Famous Grouse Parkmore, Glenn Turret and the McAllen. And then in 1999 were, quote unquote, bought by the Edrington Group, which is not really what happened. What happened is after so many generations of the family that owned Highland Distillers, moving on, they decided to create a trust to protect these distilleries. You know, in the 90s was when Diageo was emerging and trying to take everything. And so they built this legal structure to keep the group together and then transferred over shipping into the Edgerton Group. So still the same family is just a new entity in a different structure to keep the distilleries together. Highland park is best known for getting the first perfect 100 point score in the Ultimate Whiskeys Challenge tonight in 2013 for their Highland Park Park 25. I have never tasted it. You probably never will. Then the 2013 edition of a Highland park, if you can find one last Sold at auction for about 1200 US. Now if you're going to make whiskey in a windy farming area north of Scotland, you are not going to use wood and you're not going to use coal. You're going to use peat because that's what you got. But, but not all peat is made equal. So most of the peat that we think about is from Islay, which is down in the southwest, which has a very strong sort of seaweed component to it. It tends to be more tarry and resinous. Even the mainland peats that have more lignin in from because they're just decayed plants. So they have more trees in them, have stronger flavors. There are no trees on the Orkneys and so their peat is primarily sphagnum moss and heather. That's what grows there, that's what decays there, that's what becomes peat bog there. And so it actually has a different scent and a different flavor. Now that being said, only 20% of the barley that's used in a Highland park is actually the peated malt from the island. In fact, Highland still does their own maltings unlike almost any other distillery. Although the majority of the barley in a Highland park park comes from the commercial processors. Highland park talks about five Keystones in the way they make their whiskey. That they do hand turn floor modelings like I just described with their peated barley. That they use what they call Hobster Moore peat, which is from the Hobster Moore, which is this heather peat. And that they use sherry casks, cool maturation and cask carbonization. Those are the five keystones. So 20% of the barley is this still hand turned peated barley that they do themselves because none of the rest of them do this anymore. And then they use commercial pre prepared grist for the rest. That means their PPM levels lower than most. You know your typical lagavulin's running about 50, 60 ppm. This is more like 12. So it's an intro to Pete. Like it's really quite gentle and it's a sweeter Pete. Anyway, so they do their big batch in the mash ton. They do their wardrobe quartz into Oregon pine washbacks. I got a dozen of those. It's a 60 hour fermentation which is not particularly long. It's not warm there so they don't have the time battles. They've only got four stills. Two wash stills at 18,000 liters, two spirit stills at 12,000 liters. Relatively short with flat lie arms. Nothing fancy about the still. It's this mixed peat and the mild Pete that's sort of the claim to fame for Highland Park. But there's one other thing that Highland park does that's fairly unique and that is that they do not use third party barrels. They don't use any bourbon barrels. They don't even really use sherry barrels. But they do age in sherry. But here's how they do it. Highland Distillers for many years has owned forests in both Missouri and in Spain. And so they cut their own oak for their own barrels and then they age them with sherry. So they buy sherry for the purpose and they soak these new make barrels in cherry for two years before they put their own fill in it. They fill at a fairly high level at 69.5, but that's because the wood is new and so there's more ability to extract on that. They're not as being. They're not dealing with the fact that there's been previous spirit in the barrel. So they have more options on how they do that. They do very traditional storage, so concrete floors, but only three high horizontal racking. Because the climate is so mild there, they don't have all those same problems. It's just wooden rack houses and. And then they combine their barrels into that cask combination to get to their flavor points. And a 12 year is they don't do any barrel mixing per se. It's all the same kinds of barrels across the board. Except for the bit they're both sherry barrels. Just some Spanish oak and some American oak. And you can buy this. The bevmos I got them, they're about 43 alcohol, $50. So not extreme for a 12 year old. It's kind of a bargain. You know, you can. You'll spend more on a. On a 12 year old Macallan for sure. And you're gonna get a nice intro to Pete. It's pretty light and sweet. It's very drinkable. And it's one of the pot, one of the components that goes into making famous grouse alongside the Macallan. So it's. It's a special kind of whiskey. It's. It won its titles for a reason and it's not a normal pick. If you've got a friend who likes whiskey who's never tried it before, you should get it for the great gift.
