Scapa 10 yo (48%, OB, 2024) 
Ironically, Serge beat me to these new expressions just this past week. I’m a fan of the new look Scapa, and this 10yo at least seems pretty well priced and with an encouraging bottling strength. Colour: straw. Nose: zesty citrus, polished cereals and green fruit. Some green banana, apple, kiwi and melon. Typical bourbon driven, easy and fruity stuff. Mouth: lemony up front again, lemon meringue pie with the creamy sweetness of American cream soda, suggesting some pretty active first fill bourbon at play. Buy the same sense of easy, rich fruitiness is undeniable. Finish: good length, rather peppery and still sweet with green apple. Comments: excellent entry bottling, just a notch too much wood activity for me, but the quality is certainly high. I admire the adhesion to classical bourbon maturation, but I would have loved a bit of a refill component in the mix to bring a bit of freshness and a bit more Scapa distillate character.
SGP: 651 - 85 points.

Scapa 16 yo (48%, OB, 2024)
Colour: gold. Nose: same feeling but more coconut, toasty oak, candied citrus peel, cupboard spices and a touch of wax. Gets a little more complex with time, revealing some coastal and floral touches. Mouth: pretty spicy and peppery, with some slightly exotic notes, lime sweets, citrus curds and custard. It’s the texture and body which impress most here, very enjoyable. A similar feeling of some active oak just lurking in the background. Finish: medium, on wood spices, dessert wine sweetness and custard again. Comments: it’s the texture that really impresses here. I would just add the same comment as the 10yo, it would be nice to fell a slight balance of some refill rather than full on first fill.
SGP: 661 - 87 points.

Scapa 21 yo (52.9%, OB, 2024) 
Colour: gold. Nose: gingery, cinnamon and spices. Green peppercorn, charred pineapple, cereal, waxes and a little aniseed. With water: nutmeg, cedar wood and sandalwood, with some subtle beach sand and healthier horny vibes – feeling suitably ‘Orcadian’ and even a little bit HP, dare I say. Mouth: grippy spices and a nice menthol note on arrival. Eucalyptus, lemon verbena, bergamot and dried exotic fruits in muesli. With water: herbal, honeyed and waxier. Still quite spicy but the overall weight, texture and dried fruity vibes are lovely. Finish: good length, on coconut, herbal teas, heather honey and peppery spice again. Comments: very good, oak involvement once again but it’s a solid older Scapa with excellent development and a clear Orkney accent.
SGP: 661 - 88 points.

Scapa 14 yo Distillery Exclusive (48.1%, OB, 1st fill barrels, 1500 bottles)
Colour: gold. Nose: menthol, watercress, lemon verbena, mint, eucalyptus and flower honeys. An immediately enchanting profile that feels like what you ‘want’ Scapa to behave like. Lots of fruit teas, herbal extracts and crystalised honeys that go towards mead and waxy honeycomb. A superb nose! Mouth: a little more in line with the new 10 and 16 year olds, with a more peppery, wood spice driven character, but also more strong fruit teas, heather honey, waxes, camphor, wet wool and touches of white flowers and fir wood resins. Finish: quite long, with a drier peppery warmth, crème de menthe, fir woods, lemon oil and baked apples in custard. Comments: perilously easy to drink and crying out for a hefty measure in a tumbler, which is precisely what I think a distillery exclusive bottling should deliver. Extra points for the wonderfully expressive and fun nose. 
SGP: 561 – 88 points. 

Scapa 16 yo (57.4%, OB ‘Distillery Reserve Collection’, cask #2182, 1st fill sherry butt, 924 bottles) 
I was impressed by the range of bottlings available at Scapa’s lovely wee visitor centre, but at £125.00 this wee 50cl 16yo seems too highly priced in my view. Now, we don’t score prices here on WF… Colour: amber. Nose: punchy modern sherry that’s full of beef consommé, Bovril, crusted port, cocktail bitters, celery salt and rather jammy dark fruit notes, like prune paste and strawberry jam. It’s a very powerful style, that flies in the face of Scapa’s usual grace and elegance. Goes on with some breads, dark ales and coffee grounds. With water: game meats, strop leather, aged pinot noir and liquid vegetable stock like Maggi. Full of broths, vegetal and herbal impressions. Mouth: tough and punchy up front, rather assertive wood spices, some cranberry gravy, freshly brewed espresso, walnut oil and black miso paste. Very spicy and very umami in profile. With water: lean, dry, meaty, leathery, gamey and earthy with a lot of black pepper, hints of aniseed and more umami broths and infusions. Becoming even pretty salty after a while… Finish: very long, umami, gamey, salty and with pickled walnuts, mustard powder and black pepper. Comments: a wee thug! Makes you feel not unlike you’ve been mugged twice! (I’m kidding, dear Pernod Ricard, sort of 😉). Anyway, this is a technically very good wee Scapa, but it’s just rather tough. I think I’ll leave this bottle open with a bit of headspace and re-visit it in a year or so. Probably the sort of very fun bottle to pour blind to your whisky friends and play find the distillery, I suspect people would hazard Parkmore before they guessed Scapa.
SGP: 471 – 85 points.  

Highland Park 12 yo (40%, OB, -/+ 2024)
One other noteworthy wee aspect of these new HP bottlings is that they are all natural colour, which is also encouraging to see. For example… colour: bright straw (woohoo!). Nose: more heathery and honeyed than I recall, with a light background peat smoke. Damp leaves, some orange peel and more classic sherried notes such as sultana and fruit cake. Mouth: it’s the sherry that feels a bit louder now. More on dried fruits, some cinnamon bark, heather honey and again this very faint peat smoke note. Finish: quite long, getting a little spicier, more leaves, dark fruits and cedar wood. Comments: very good, feels like the lack of caramel leaves a more natural profile. I think it is also notably more sherried and ever so slightly more peaty than recent years batches. We had the recent ‘Viking Honour’ 12yo at WF83, but I think this is a notch better. 
SGP: 463 - 84 points. 

Highland Park 15 yo (44%, OB, -/+2024)
The last version of this was in a cream-coloured ceramic bottle and named ‘Viking Heart’, which we thought was pretty solid (WF84). Colour: pale gold. Nose. Appears quite similar to the 12, perhaps a little more overtly fruity with green fruits joining the darker ones. I also find some lovely notes of plum jam, unlit cigar, hessian and thicker notes of pure heather honey and restrained, drying peat smoke. Denser and more vivid than the 12yo I would say. Mouth: on marmalade, crystalised fruits, cedar wood, a slightly more assertive peat smoke and again this sense of damp leaves. Lovely texture and richness with a return once again to darker fruit impressions. Finish: medium, thickly on spiced marmalade, mead, camphor, pollens and lightly herbal smoky notes. Comments: I find this an excellent new addition to the core range at a rather smart ABV. Potentially my favourite of the main expressions and certainly an improvement from the previous iteration of the 15yo. Like the 12yo, it feels like there’s a slightly more distinctive peat character on display, which is really enjoyable. 
SGP: 563 - 87 points.

Highland Park 18 yo (43%, OB, -/+2024)
It’s been a long time since I tasted anything other than some very old batches of the HP 18yo, so this is a long overdue refresher course for me... Colour: gold. Nose: more directly and classically sherried. Lots of fig, sultana, milk chocolate, honeycomb and soft wood spice. I also start to find it waxy and notably more pronounced honeyed notes emerging. A few greener fruit notes such as apple and gooseberry emerge, but balanced by tangerine, bergamot and herbal cough syrup. Mouth: feels like a logical continuation of the 12 and 15, only softer, still quite spicy, but with the fruit dialled down and focused on darker components. Lots of marmalade, heather honey, medicinal herbs and unlit cigars in humidors. You can see what they’re trying to do and it does more or less work. Finish: surprisingly long and a bit smokier and drier than expected. Rich cereals, waxes, wood resins and camphor all adding a late-stage sense of weight. Comments: gathered extra points at the end with that lovely finish. It’s not up there with some historic batches of the 18yo in my view, but it feels like a sensitively and rather meticulously composed bottling made with a sense of elevating distillery character front and centre. Same score as the 15yo for me, but I’d probably opt for a bottle of the 15 over the 18 if I had to choose. 
SGP: 662 - 87 points.

Highland Park 20 yo 1974 (46%, First Cask, cask #4334)
A bottling series supplied by Signatory to Direct Wines, we’ve had many very lovely bottlings in this under the radar wee series over the years. Colour: pale gold. Nose: waxy with leafy smokiness, cider apple notes that are simultaneously tart, sour and funky, then more on hessian, chalky coastal and mineral notes, lemon rind and a rather brittle, dry peat note. Feels oddly close to many of these excellent unnamed Orkney Malts that are commonly found at the indies these days. Mouth: soft peat, heather honey and many subtle notes of dried seaweed, miso, camphor, fir wood, lightly smoked olive oil and sandalwood. Very pure and vivid old Highland Park character on display here – utterly natural, charming and beautiful. Finish: long, salty, gently earthy peat notes, dried herbs and subtle notes of citrus, white flowers and coastal impressions. Comments: hard to argue with such simple, elegant bottlings that simply deliver unvarnished, beautiful distillery character without fuss or fanfare. The peat character in these old HPs is glorious. 
SGP: 464 – 90 points. 

Highland Park 10 yo 1999 (57.3%, Scotch Malt Whisky Society 4.135 ‘Orcadian Tongue-Roaster’, 1st fill bourbon barrel, 109 bottles)
Always good to know that ‘tongue-roaster’ should be hyphenated. Also, a pretty low outturn after 10 years with a good ABV like this is usually an encouraging sign… Colour: bright straw. Nose: lemony waxes, beach sand and pebbles, sandalwood, flower honeys and some notes of orange marmalade and tiger balm. Sitting on the lighter but still distinctive side of the HP profile. Also, a lovely sense of freshness and brightness about this nose. With water: chalk, sandalwood, coastal flowers, lightly smoked sea salt and heather ales. Mouth: indeed, a lighter, perhaps more modern style with less peat influence, but still a lot of mineral impressions and coastal notes. Mineral salts, light briny aspects, seaweed crackers, eucalyptus and elegant waxiness. Delicate threads of peat smoke woven down in the mix. With water: really on coastal freshness, saltiness and also a more defined and textured waxy character. The peat smoke is elevated nicely too. Finish: long, drying, salty, on camphor, caraway, miso, brine and dried herbs. Comments: there’s a surprising amount of nuance and detail to this one, and it swims as effortlessly as a rugged Orcadian should. A lovely, slightly different take on the HP character from this era. 
SGP: 462 – 88 points.

Highland Park 8 yo (100 proof, Gordon & MacPhail, -/+1978)
We’ve tried a number of bottles in this livery over the years on Whiskyfun, and they typically fetch north of 93 at least. There seems to be many variations and vattings out there, which would make sense given the fact that these were probably bottled as required in small volumes. This is a bottle I opened in Japan a few weeks ago and now seems like the most sensible occasion to record notes. Colour: light amber. Nose: stunningly herbal, leafy and earthy sherry, full of salted almonds, green walnut liqueur, verbena, bone marrow, wormwood, celery salt, camphor and resinous hardwoods. One of those aromas where you aren’t too sure what comes from peat, what comes from sherry and what comes purely from distillate, a perfect fusion of influences and forces. Stunning herbal qualities continue to emerge, along with more medicinal aspects and this persistently beautiful, earthy, drying, deep peat note. With water: becomes astonishingly herbal and complex, really a whole herb garden on display, with dried exotic fruits, bone-dry peat smoke, earth, roots, vegetable stocks and salt cured game meats. Totally defeats you. Mouth: another level still! Totally stunning old style peat smoke, tar, camphor, pinecones full of resins, treacle with sea salt, natural tar liqueurs, herbal cough syrup – the list goes on and on. But really this is all about total power and force of personality, of a cohesive and highly singular personality. With water: brilliant, tense, salty, peaty, immensely coastal and yet also deeply earthy, thick and dense in texture. A masterpiece. Finish: extremely long and utterly glorious; cavernous and echoing with myriad peat flavours. Comments: as we often point out, whiskies that get to this level tend to have one thing in common: they lead, you follow. That’s precisely what happens here, a whisky that just gallops along and all you can do is attempt to keep up. These sorts of drams are bewildering to the mind. 
SGP: 564 – 94 points.