The Highland Park Freya

Tasting notes:
We’re big fans of HP and have really enjoyed these special releases.  And this offering makes quite an impression.  The nose is exceptionally light.  A ragout of wren marrow.  Pin feathers and meringue cookies dropped from the Tower of Pisa in a test of gravity.  A marshmallow crowded into a canvas bag with die packs and banded stacks of cash after a bank robbery. 
     If I were nosing this blind, I’d say it was Highland Parky.  Mermaid-bacon smoke [Bill: Wouldn’t that make it Highland Porky?], Sherry Butt staves, but above all, floral.  Grapefruit tree flower in full bloom, from which high-end mixed drinks with housemade bitters can be made.  Make it a wet-hopped bespoke cocktail, with the bartender squeezing the last drips from a sachet she found at the back of Oscar Wilde’s silk ruffle drawer. 
     The mouth is delicious.  Beautiful Fig Newtons made with kirsch-soaked dried plums and angel-sifted pastry flour.  An ethnic minority of plaintains militating for revolution in a banana republic.  A fireworks show viewed by a drone and then replayed backwards.
     The finish is the sensation of sucking spring water through a straw made of gardenia petals.  Sugar cookies in the shape of gingerbread men: lemon drop eyes, cream cheese mutton chops, and a rakish ascot from mascarpone cheese.  On the open it’s candy candy candy candy.  Fruit salad.  Slight bitterness, like dandelion leaves in a large salad with shaved arugula.  If the goal was to create a brilliant whisky that says, “I am a fantastic Highland Park,” then you have done well.  I shall be applying forthwith to be Freya’s shield maiden.

Rating:

–On the scale of super old national parliaments–
The Highland Park Freya is the Althing of Iceland–Founded in 930 AD, you could argue a case in the Lögberg rationally…or you could bring a bunch of bad-ass Norsemen with big-ass swords and spears and win that way. I’d bring a case of the Highland Park Freya: Case opened, case closed!