Highland Park 1988 Murray McDavid Tasting Notes and Ratings.

Highland Park 1988 Murray McDavid

Added on Thursday, Dec 17, 2009 at 10:40 PM

Bottler:

Murray McDavid

Age:	11 yrs	Type:	Scotch
Vintage:	1998	Subtype:	Single Malt
ABV:	46.00 %	Region:	Islands
Price:	$55	Availability:	Collectors Only

Distilled November 1988 Bottled May 2000 Cask Ref: MM 1298 Fresh Sherry

Member Ratings and Notes

Mike

N: Started with sulphur, but the cork broke. Was that it? It went away. Sherry, varnish, wood cleaner. All in an appetizing way.

P: Tasty salt, spiced candy, a little like Big Red.

F: Hard candy, little caramel. Medium in length, but good. Quite warming and comforting.

Chris

N: Interesting, has the same tomato plant vegetal quality like some other first fill sherry cask bottlings (Linkwood) from Murray McDavid during this period.
P: Very sweet, not like Highland Park at all, smoke is very restrained.
F: Carries through with sherry fruit and spice.
Apparently the standard range of HP has a certain percentage of first fill sherry cask whisky in it which contributes the sweetness and refill cask matured whisky adds the smoke. [There are some good videos on Singlemalt.tv about this] This is decent stuff, but could use that smoke to balance it out. Goes to show that the Master Blender plays an important role with single malts as well.

Adam

Nose has some sulfur and pencil shavings, sherried scents. In the palate the sulfur doesn't bother me, it's not really here. A nicely sherried, lightly peated number that doesn't have a standard Highland Park character to it, strikes me more like a Linkwood. A nice surprise.

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