Highland Park 21 Year Old

I've been drinking this 47% HP 21yo for three years from miniatures, simply because there was limited availability and the 70cl bottles were not ready for release until very recently. The 5cl miniatures have been a great dram, great balance, consistency and quality.

I bought a bottle of the 70cl and have a different experience. The nose offers a consistent malty honey, toffee, orange and sea salt aromas. The taste though I found unbalanced and not as layered or complex as previous offerings. There's no truffle oil texture of former releases and this really doesn't have the complexity of what I'd expect from 21 years of ageing. This didn't take water well and remained limited without any real surprises. This is a £100 bottle of 21 yo single malt but I've had whisky at half the price twice as better. The Talisker 18yo for example blows this away for smoothness and complexity.

I would also expect a single malt at this level to be free of caramel or colouring and be non chill filtered, and really felt that this is a well marketed tourists whiskey and not for purists.. Pleasant but underwhelming.

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