Highland Park 16 Year Twisted Tattoo
Since beginning their distillery on Orkney in 1798, Highland Park has been crafting scotch and working with artisans from around the world, continually reinventing itself while also holding true to their history and traditions. A recent rebranding effort has seen them lean more heavily into the Viking influence of that area of Scotland, often seen in evocative names to accompany the usual age statements. The Highland Park 16 Year is called the Twisted Tattoo after Jörmungandr, the Midgard serpent of Norse legend. The design and packaging was the result of a partnership with Danish tattoo artist Colin Dale. Highland Park regularly uses ex-sherry casks as part of their standard maturation process but in the Twisted Tattoo, the scotch was finished in ex-Rioja casks.
Boulder Spirits Peated Malt
Boasting “…big dreams, bigger goals, and the biggest pot still in the state” Boulder Spirits Distillery brings us their Peated American Single Malt. The recipe is simple: distillers malted barley, a Scottish pot still, #3 char American white oak barrels, aged in an arid high elevation climate, and cut with the celebrated Eldorado Springs water. Their outlook is that peat can be a piece of the whiskey, and not the defining attribute. Aged for a minimum of three years, the Boulder Spirits Peated Malt uses is a lightly peated single malt made in the tradition of Scotland, with American ingenuity.
Laphroaig 10 Year
The Laphroaig distillery was founded in 1815 by Donald and Alexander Johnston and has a richly storied history on Islay. Though the distillery has changed ownership after passing out of the Johnston family’s hands in the mid-1950s, production has continued unabated. The current portfolio is large and made up of several age-statement offerings, some cycling in and out of availability, along with a few non-age statement whiskies. Few scotches are more common in liquor stores, restaurants and bars (and home bars), even those not specializing in whiskies, than the Laphroaig 10 Year. Because of its wide availability, it is often the first Islay or first scotch in general that some people experience. Another iconic feature of the brand is the Friends of Laphroaig, a brand loyalty program established in 1994 that purports to give the purchaser of every bottle of the brand a lifetime lease of a square foot of Islay, though the program was revamped in 2020. A popular feature of visiting the distillery is being shown one’s personal square foot while enjoying a dram.