VALHALLA

 Highland Park Valhalla Collection

WHISKY FROM THE NORDIC GODS

Highland Park’s location as the northernmost distillery in Scotland on windswept Orkney opens it up to the harshest weather conditions for distilling whisky.  This Island distillery proudly underscores its north-of-the-law heritage with Nordic branding and continuing reminders of its illicit past.

Highland Park’s Norse-inspired Valhalla Collection comprises four expressions named after Nordic gods: Thor, Loki, Freya and Odin. The creators attempted to reflect the characterisations of each Norse god in the whisky’s appearance and flavour, from the “fresh, golden and seductive” Freya – the Goddess of Love – to the “intense, powerful and complex” flavours of Odin.

Highland Park, one of only two distilleries in the Orkney Isles, is Scotland's most northerly whisky distillery. It was founded in 1798 by Magnus Euson. Until it was licensed in 1825 its production was illicit and Euson was assisted in evading the excisemen by a kinsman who was a Kirk elder and hid the contraband under the pulpit. By the 1880s, Highland Park had an established reputation and at one time both the King of Denmark and the Emperor of Russia declared it to be the finest whisky they had ever tasted.

Highland Park’s location as the northernmost distillery in Scotland on windswept Orkney opens it up to the harshest weather conditions for distilling whisky.  This Island distillery proudly underscores its north-of-the-law heritage with Nordic branding and continuing reminders of its illicit past.

Highland Park is one of the few distilleries to carry on the tradition of floor malting, a labour-intensive process where barley is spread across a floor and regularly hand-turned for even germination before being kilned with Orkney peat, a famously heathery peat saturated by eons of salt spray. Only about 20% of the malt used to make Highland Park’s whisky is floor malted; the remainder is unpeated and sourced from other suppliers. Most expressions, including Highland Park 12, are aged primarily in Sherry seasoned butts, puncheons and hogsheads made from Spanish and American oak.

The first distillery bottling was in 1979 as a 43% ABV 12 YO, the locus of a core range of Viking names. This became the 40% ABV Viking Honour in 2017, but not part of the Valhalla Range.

HIGHLAND PARK THOR

16-Year-Old Valhalla Collection  

Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky

Distillery Bottling, 70cl / 52.1% ABV

The beginning of a new range of four whiskies from Highland Park, The Valhalla Collection, showing off Orkney's ancient links with Scandinavia and the distillery's love of history. First up is Thor, God of Thunder and alleged architect of the Cliffs of Yesnaby on the west coast of Orkney Mainland. It's a 16-year-old whisky at 52.1% ABV and presented in a wooden frame styled after the prow of a Viking longboat.

A limited release of 23,000 bottles on 30 January 2012, Thor, a 16-year-old single malt, was the first release in Highland Park’s 'Valhalla Collection', consisting of four variants to be released annually, each named after Nordic gods.

Billed as “the whisky of the gods, " the last black box scroll said, “Celebrate Thors’ day with the compliments of the gods”. This stunning 16-year-old single malt is believed to be the first ever explicitly designed around an individual god’s character.”

Increasingly hard to find, this 16 Year Old edition delivers powerful smoky notes reminiscent of Thor’s Hammer smashing against the Orkney Mountains of Hoy, carving the great wall of stone. The underlying sweet notes are inspired by Thor's inner strength and show that beyond his exterior warrior façade, there is still the caring, humble god that makes him a much-loved legend.

HIGHLAND PARK LOKI
The Second Release Of The Valhalla Collection
One of Norse Mythology's Most Treacherous & Mischievous Characters

15-Year-Old Valhalla Collection  

Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Distillery Bottling, 70cl / 48.7% ABV         

                                     

Loki is one of the most complex characters in Norse mythology, regularly positioned as a trickster and often engaged in treachery and mischief. Highland Park Single Malt Scotch has released a whisky that bottles the characteristics of Loki while still celebrating the unique Highland Park house style.

According to some sources, Loki is the son of Fárbauti (a jötunn) and Laufey (mentioned as a goddess), and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. Loki is married to Sigyn and they have two sons, Narfi and Nari or Váli. By the jötunn Angrboða, Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr. In the form of a mare, Loki was impregnated by the stallion Svaðilfari and gave birth to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir.

Loki's relationship with the gods varies by source; he sometimes assists the gods and sometimes behaves maliciously towards them. Loki is a shape shifter and in separate incidents appears in the form of a salmon, a mare, a fly, and possibly an elderly woman named Þökk. Loki's positive relations with the gods end with his role in engineering the death of the god Baldr, and eventually, Odin's specially engendered son Váli binds Loki with the entrails of one of his sons, placing a serpent above him while he is bound.

The serpent drips venom from above him and causes Loki to writhe in pain, thereby setting off earthquakes. With the onset of Ragnarök, Loki slips free from his bonds and fights against the gods among the forces of the jötnar, at which time he encounters the god Heimdallr, and the two slay each other. A rather convoluted story, our trickster Loki.

When word started trickling down the pipeline that these releases were imminent some of the historically bent, Norse god-hailing whisky nerds began salivating in anticipation. The prices would be steep, the whisky would be middle-aged and the outturn would be quite limited. A cask-strength HP packaged up in a mini Viking longship.

Gimmickry and price tag aside, Loki is a really good whisky. This one wears its 15 years well, seeming maybe even a little more mature than that, and what a palate here! Great late evening malt for nights when the wind is howling and the fire is roaring. In keeping with Loki’s antecedents, it's a whisky that changes between nose and palate, and shifts around in the glass.

PRODUCER'S NOTES:

NOSE: A spirited lift of dried bitter orange which quickly turns into lemon peels. Cardamom notes trick then tease the nose before an enticing hit of gingerbread develops. With water, liquorice and aromatic smoke are both unleashed.

PALATE: The true shape-shifting ability of Loki springs to life on the palate: its waxy texture is amplified by an intense smoke that doesn't appear on the nose, shattering the light citrusy illusion of the aroma. All is not what it seems. The smoke fades as liquorice and rich spiced apple flavours come out to play. Lemon and grapefruit are consistent throughout this elusive, yet intriguing character. With a touch of water, lingering notes of melted dark chocolate over spent embers leave a soft smoky impression.

FINISH: As Loki departs, he leaves behind toasted cloves, hickory smoke and soft vanilla. It is constantly changing, from appearance to finish. Loki is an enigma and truly another whisky of the gods. As is the price, £600.

HIGHLAND PARK FREYA

Freyja, Old Norse for Lady, most renowned of the Norse goddesses, was the sister and female counterpart of Freyr, the ruler of peace and fertility, rain, and sunshine was in charge of love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, death and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Her father was Njörd, the sea god. Pigs were sacred to her, and she rode a boar with golden bristles. A chariot drawn by cats was another of her vehicles. It was Freya’s privilege to choose one-half of the heroes slain in battle for her great hall in the Fólkvangar (the god Odin took the other half to Valhalla).

She possessed a famous necklace called Brísinga men, which the trickster god Loki stole and Heimdall, the gods’ watchman, recovered. Greedy and lascivious, Freya was also credited with the evil act of teaching witchcraft to the Aesir (a tribe of gods). Like the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Greek Aphrodite, Freya travelled through the world seeking a lost husband and weeping tears of gold.

Various plants in Scandinavia once bore her name, but it was replaced with the name of the Virgin Mary during the process of Christianisation. Rural Scandinavians continued to acknowledge Freyja as a supernatural figure into the 19th century, and Freyja has inspired various works of art. Highland Park obviously took the naming seriously, delivering a golden-hued dram with a luscious palate and lovely, complex flavour profile. But don’t sell this goddess short… at 51.2% ABV, it’s a powerful dram.

              

Brand        Highland Park Single Malt
Bottler      Distillery Bottling
Country    Scotland
Region      Island
Size           70cl
Strength   51.2% ABV
Age           15 Years Old

HIGHLAND PARK ODIN

The fourth Release Of The Valhalla Collection

16-Year-Old Valhalla Collection  
Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky
Distillery Bottling, 75cl / 55.8% ABV
Year of Release 2015 

Highland Park’s Odin is the fourth and final single malt Scotch whisky in its Norse-inspired Valhalla Collection. The 16-year-old expression follows the releases of Thor, Loki and Freya, and is named after the All-father of the gods and ruler of Asgard.

Odin is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet, and depicts him as the husband of the goddess Frigg. According to legend, Odin is the strongest of all the Norse gods, driven by an ‘insatiable thirst for wisdom’, and lost an eye for a drink from the Well of Wisdom in order to gain “immeasurable knowledge and insight”. Odin is also associated with the divine battlefield maidens, the Valkyries, and he oversees Valhalla, where he receives half of those who die in battle.

This limited edition whisky with only 17,000 bottles released globally was presented in a dramatic black ‘battle worn’ bottle and black Viking long ship-inspired wooden frame that is a signature to the complete series. It was 16 years old, 55.8% ABV, and for those lucky enough to have managed to pick up a bottle, it was available at a recommended retail price of £180. The whisky itself was aged in 250-litre hogsheads previously holding sherry; starting with refill casks and then transferred to fresh first-fill casks for a final four years.

Odin, like its namesake, is an intense, powerful and complex whisky. It certainly lives up to the legend, a bold single malt higher in strength than Thor, Loki and Freya. In Odin, Highland Park has been able to add the final flourish to the Valhalla Collection, a stunning series of remarkable whiskies that offer affordability and exclusive collectability.

              

Now that Odin has joined the ranks of the other gods in the Valhalla Collection, the first chapter in this series is complete. However, the Norse legends of old may still offer them and us future intrigues.

TASTING NOTES

From a combination of first-fill sherry casks and refill hogsheads, all this Norse info tends to leave the humanoids rather cold, but after all, it’s the bottle's content that counts.

Colour: deep gold.

Nose: The sherry feels, and comes with some raisins soaked in kirsch as well as touches of gunpowder and nutmeg. Then we find more eau-de-vie-soaked cake (fruitcake with dates and figs), charcoal, burning pipe, struck matches and strong mead, with a fermentary side. It’s a little rough, perhaps, and may lack a bit of the luscious complexity of older sherried Highland Parks. With water: some kind of smoked stout, smoky mustard, walnuts… A wee feintiness, perhaps, but after ten minutes, more biscuits do emerge and it rather gets rounder.

Palate (neat): rather hot and spicy. Cumin, pepper, bitter oranges, raisins, slivovitz, ginger. A sticky-toffee note is enveloped by an intense wallop of peat. An undercurrent of Sherry and gingerbread sweetness runs underneath the smoke, entwining into a mesquite-like smoky-sweet and spicy finish. Rather gritty, with a slightly acrid smokiness. With water: the spices keep singing (nutmeg, caraway, ginger) and suggest some active oak’s been used. Smoky walnuts and more bitter oranges. Ginger liqueur.

Finish: rather long, peppery, slightly salty/smoky. Bitter oranges again in the aftertaste. Comments: very fine, rather powerful and fairly ‘polished’. The oak’s spices are a tad loud, like Odin’s personality.