Highland Park Odin (Valhalla Collection)
Too much has been said and written about the Highland Park Odin, so I’ll keep it short. Here are my tasting notes one of the most anticipated releases of 2015.
Highland Park Odin (55,8%, OB, 17.000 bts.)
Nose: Vegetal at first, but that quickly makes place for fruit. Cherry syrup (lots of it), rum soaked raisins and ripe banana. Slightly burned, some smoke, but it stays very much in the background. Good balance.
Taste: Ginger and cherries with lots of spiciness. Cloves, pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg. There’s a smokiness behind the spicy layer, and not much is left of the sweet fruits that were there in the nose. The palate has a rubber-y edge to it, not a very pleasant aspect. This is a lot rougher than the nose led me to believe.
Finish: Dry and some of the sweetness does make a return here. There’s rubber (sulphur) still, with pepper and a hint of smoke.
Rating: 85
The Highland Park Odin is big, bold and unpolished. The nose is properly balanced and enjoyable, but the palate is rough, tough and not for the faint of heart. For me the sulphur is somewhat disruptive. Not a perfect whisky at all, but not bad either. I’d say it is okay to good, but (and this shouldn’t be a surprise) not worth its retail price. Terrible value for money if you intend to drink it. Better value for money if you’re looking to speculate.
Thanks to Sjoerd for arranging this bottle share, and sending me my sample.
Thijs is a spirits writer and accredited liquorist from The Netherlands. He runs the blog Words of Whisky and contributes to a number of Dutch and international publications.
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