Highland Park’s new Dark Origins expression has hit American shores.
And while my review has many favorable things to say about the whisky itself, the packaging and marketing is a bit much.
Out of the shadows and first fill sherry casks of European oak comes a mysterious no-age-statement expression, the first deemed worthy of Highland Park’s core range of classic single malt.
Having now tasted it, I am surprised they aren’t marketing it as a recreation of a pre-Prohibition version of Highland Park, due to the prominence of European oak, Oloroso sherry, and peat.
Instead, they have taken things further into the realm of romantic fantasyland when it comes to the packaging and the marketing that goes along with it.
The name Dark Origins is meant to harken back to the founder of the distillery, who was a clergyman by trade, while engaging in illicit whisky making before he was granted a legal license to distill in 1798.
I guess if Jameson’s PR folks can invent tall tales about their Kraken-slaying founder, Highland Park can turn theirs into a figure of manly mystery, whose secret dealings as a “dark distiller” is equated with defending the common folk of the Orkney Islands from “from the villainy of the tax collectors.”
Are your eyes rolling yet?
The Dark Origins box sports the image of said founder’s head partially obscured by a hooded cloak. He even has the stubble of a Hollywood action figure on his chiseled unshaven chin, ala Braveheart or Aragorn son of Arathorn. At least they left him off of the bottle, which is is also black and all done in silver writing.
Perhaps this Robin Hood vs. the tax collector slant is all a poke at the legal restrictions in Scotland that say thou shall not display an age statement on a bottle of whisky older than the youngest spirit contained therein. So the ages of the casks blended to create Dark Origins shall remain a mystery, and so will be the whisky itself, unless you buy it and free it from the obfuscation of the black bottle.
However, the use of the word “dark” also signifies the larger portion of the expression that was aged in first fill sherry casks – which is proven in the nose alone.
And while it is a bit darker than the 12 year old expression, and notably darker than the 15 year old, which is the closest to it in terms of price, the post-production enhancement of the “rich mahogany” color seen in the official video advertisement for Dark Origins, conveniently held up in front of a stained mahogany wall, bears no resemblance to what actually comes out of the bottle.
Hardly cricket, that. But at least they resisted any temptation to introduce caramel coloring, something Highland Park does not use, and hopefully never will.
I found the pale amber of the actual color, with its blackish accents, and rich golden highlights quite attractive, even if Dark Origins comes nowhere near the “rich mahogany” color of the 30 year old expression, which we tasted along side it.
The published wording (here as it actually appears on the box and bottle) is:
“DOUBLE first fill sherry casks for a DARKER richer flavour.”
At first that sounds as fine an example of marketing DOUBLE speak as I can remember. Double compared to what? They do not say. And how can a flavor be darker when light or its absence has no bearing on the senses of taste and smell?
But since I often use metaphors such as “dark” when trying to describe sound during many guitar reviews, I will grant them this allusion to a darker flavor.
In fairness, other marketing copy makes clear it has twice the first fill sherry casks involved than the standard 12 year old expression – and it certainly tastes like it. It is full of darker fruit like figs, prunes and cherries than the usual oranges and banana often floating around a glass of Highland Park, and the peat, both the green mulch and the smoke itself are also denser and pervasive. So dark isn’t such a bad metaphor for this spirit, since it is denser and more somber than typical HP.
And this branding of Highland Park Dark Origins is a good deal less brash than something like Talisker Storm, or the highland cow adorning Glen Scotia’s colorful if misguided packaging, the nouveau color schemes of Bruichladdich, or for that matter the over-the-top presentation of the new Mortlach line. It is hard to believe such displays actually bring in more sales than they discourage. But this sort of fanciful marketing seems to be trending, sad to say.
While its black bottle and action hero packaging is bit much, Highland Park’s tasty new Dark Origins expression fits more with the traditional distillery character than many of their other non-age-statement expressions, like those from their absurdly over-priced Valhalla series. But if they wish to use up their old bourbon casks and virgin oak casks in special editions to raise capital while saving their sherry casks for the core range, I am all for it!
Even if the fanciful packing might suggest otherwise, Dark Origins is well worth tracking down, and should be available across the U.S. very soon.
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