Highland Park’s Valkyrie Expression and the New Viking Legends Series

By One Man on April 27, 2017 in News, Single Malt Whisky

The tasteful new Highland Park Valkyrie bottle was created in partnership with Jim Lyngvild

The Danish fashion designer specializes in Viking-inspired looks, while also creating authentic, historically accurate Viking clothing. His endeavors include helping to create skin care products using natural Scandinavian ingredients. and a beer that used Highland Park whisky as one of its ingredients.

Highland Park Valkyrie appeared before the faithful at Whisky Live! London, earlier this month.

There are two other Viking Legends expressions on the calendar for 2018/19, named Valknut and Valhalla.

Sometimes kindly described as Viking angels, the Valkyries were supernatural female spirits who decided which Viking warriors would die in battle, and escorted certain chosen ones to Valhalla, the feasting hall of the God Odin, where the Valkyries serve them mead until they are called to the last battle at the end of the world.

While it might be said that Highland Park single malt Scotch whisky has some heathery honeyed notes, it is a long way from meade. And this new Valkyrie expression kicking of the Viking Legends Series may be even farther from it, since it is reputed to be peatier and smokier than most Highland Park.

The bottle Lyngvild designed is not embossed like the new bottle being used for HP’s core age statement expressions. But they share the same silhouette, while Valkyrie’s label and carton reflect Viking artwork and literary sagas, including the stylized Valkyrie on the box, which resembles talisman pendents from Norse jewelry made between the third to the seventh century CE, which include Valkyries as a common theme.

As for the whisky itself, it is bottled at 45.9% ABV and comes from a combination of sherry barrels made of European oak, sherry barrels of American oak, and American Bourbon barrels, which HP has been incorporating into the various exotic expressions among the No Age Statement whiskies with names taken from Norse gods and legendary Viking heroes.

Official Distillery Tasting Notes

Nose: Sharp tang of sweet green apples and ripening lemons.

Palate: A bewitching mix of oriental spices. Driven by European Oak sherry seasoned casks, American Oak sherry-seasoned casks and Bourbon casks, the flavour profile is creamy vanilla with spicy, sweet, preserved ginger and lingering smokiness with hints of liquorice.

Finish: Exquisitely balanced, the long and lingering finish delivers waves of warm aromatic smoke and richly ripened fruit.

Whisky.com quotes HP’s Jason Craig as saying Valkyrie “dials up more of our smoky notes by incorporating more of our heathery peated malt… This creates a richer, fuller phenolic note that has balance due to the sweeter, heathery character of our moorland peat, but it is a slight departure from our core 12-year-old whisky.”

Um, yeah, if you can call adding whisky aged in bourbon casks into a bottle of Highland Park a “slight departure,” which is something I certainly cannot do, because it is a major departure with serious implications of the endangerment of classic Highland Park, which is aged entirely in sherry casks.

Don’t Panic!

My personal copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states as fact that the core age statement HP expressions are remaining all-sherry for now. I just get a little uneasy when marketing speak implies that bourbon barrel Highland Park in core range expressions would somehow not qualify as a radical abandonment of HP tradition, because it sounds too much like an attempt at grooming the public to accept such a departure in the future.

And whilst the future may indeed dictate such a change, no matter how much HP tries to conjure up a mythic Scandinavian past, I will not go gently into any such good night and shall put up a fight worthy of a one-way ticket to Odin’s mead hall.

And that is one man’s word on…