Highland Park 12 years old - Magnus Festival 2006 - one of 500 bottles - Original bottling - 70 cl

Highland Park remains the most northerly whisky distillery in Scotland, although not by much, as it is little more than a stone's throw from fellow Orcadian, Scapa. Accounts of the distillery's genesis vary, and the truth is probably lost to the mists of time, but it is thought that a local farmer named David Robertson founded what we now know as Highland Park distillery in 1798, on the site of an illicit still operated by nefarious smuggler (and former priest) Magnus Eunson.

Since its introduction as a single malt in the late 1970s, the distillery has been awarded many plaudits, not least of which came from the late, great whisky writer Michael Jackson, who called it “the greatest all rounder in the world of whisky”. It's characteristic style coming from the use of Sherry casks, along with an often cited heathery sweetness imparted to the spirit by way of the distinct Orcadian peat used during the malting process.

Part of a limited release of just 500 bottles from Highland Park. This was bottled for the St Magnus Festival in 2006 - an art festival founded in 1977 by Orkney's Sir Peter Maxwell Davis. The 2006 release was bottled on the 30th anniversary of the festival, and that year it celebrated Orkney's poet and raconteur George Mackay Brown.

Bottled: 2006

Age: 12 years old

40% ABV / 70cl

Bottle Number: One of only 500 bottles released