Highland Park Thor

I'm certainly curious about it : ) If the reviews are high, I may be tempted to give it a go (never been disappointed by Highland Park).

Serge Valentin has just posted a review on WhiskyFun - he seems to have liked it: http://whiskyfun.com/#010212

Hopefully there should be some more tasting notes appearing soon - there is talk of #Thorsday on Twitter and the HP PR people have been sending out rune stones to bloggers and journalists with messages that we will be rewarded soon...

https://twitter.com/#!/thor_valhalla

I can´t help myself but I become more and more sick of overhyped and overpriced Whiskys - kudos to the marketing guys but 120 quid for a "limited" (23.000 bottles) 16 year old cask strength seems ridiculous. Would I like to try it? Of course - I love HP for their intrinsic quality but as we have seen it with Ardbeg image can get more important than content. If you look at Glenfarclas you can see fantastic Quality (in poor packaging) for a very decent price - that is the direction; no fuss just brilliant whisky.

hear hear

@maltster I agree. It does seem like there is a consistent stream of "special" releases. I would like to try Thor however, unless I could purchase a dram somewhere, the bottle cost is too high for something unknown.

Well said @maltster.

HP happily shifted 6000 bottles of Earl Magnus and 5000 of Earl Haakon in a very short time after release, but there are still bottles of Saint Magnus, the middle bottling of that range which had an 11k release (I think), up for grabs.

With 23000 bottles of Thor and a smaller number with each subsequent release in the collection I'm interested to see how they sell. Starting with high numbers seems like a very good idea to get people involved who want to collect the set of all four.

Whisky isn't just a single product aimed at one type of consumer - if the idea of high priced collectible whiskies annoys you, ignore them. If anything they're subsidising (along with the blends) the interesting and sensibly packaged whiskies that most of us on here are after.

I can understand this reasoning for something really special as the Octomore, which is only for a select crowd of enthusiasts anyway. But I don't think HP's special releases are that different from their standard releases to justify their price. They can easily subsidise interesting and sensibly packaged whiskies by putting out a decent product at an honest price. I do understand the reasoning & mechanics of the free market, but that doesn't mean i have to accept it without even a word of dissent.

Just my 2 cents, still love HP though. ;)

@fons So an 18000 bottle release of Octomore in a fancy bottle that will only appeal to a small number of people is better than a 23000 bottle release of Thor in a fancy box that will only appeal to collectors? :)

(Octomore 3 was 18k according to the notes on The Whisky Exchange. I assume they went up from there in numbers for #4 - Bruichladdich aren't idiots and #3 sold out fairly quickly)

Thor's got fairly good reviews so far (tomorrow is the day that most review samples should arrive, including my own, so there should be a bunch more as of then. Although as it's a limited group of 'special' bloggers you may want to take them with a pinch of salt) so it might be worth the cash for the liquid alone, with the fancy wooden bits just detracting from it. I suspect it won't but I'm trying to be as even handed as I can without having tried it.

Still enjoying Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt (with some 28 yo stuff in there) for a lot less money, much fancier packaging, and a worldly better story!

@cowfish Maybe better's not the right choice of words, but it seems more fitting to me. The octomore is something very different from the Bruichladdich range, it's whisky out of the box. And apparently really good too. So I understand it comes at a higher price, and deservedly imo. I also get the point of a limited bottling, since such a peat monster is not something to the liking of the masses. To put it out in vast quantities would cost Bruichladdich money, I would presume. Like the Bugatti Veyron of the peated whiskies.

HP's special bottlings however, seem more about the special packaging, naming and created scarcity. Fans of the standard range will probably also appreciate the Thor and the next in range. Is it a good whisky? Very Probable. Does it justify it's price? Probably not, at least for me.

I think the price of whisky should be justified by the whisky itself, not everything around it.

But hey, that's just me rambling on.

Slainte!

All the hype about Thor has obscured the fact that, at almost the same time, HP has re-released its 21yo in 47.5% abv. Hear, hear !

@olivier Where did you hear about the 21 year old being released at 47.5% again? I've been trying to find out about it as a number of people have asked me when we're getting it in...

There is a tonne of HP 21 at 47% in Ontario. It's $290 though...

@cowfish I picked up a bottle of HP 21 at 47.5 ABV in western Canada two weeks ago...it wasn't cheap!

The 21 was available in some online shops(uk) on the 4th. Local shop also had it last week.

The old version of the 21yo, at 47.5%, was discontinued a few years back and reappeared as a 40%. I think there was some 47.5% available in duty free.

That's why 21yo at 47.5% is rather pricy, so if they're going to rerelease it at 47.5% it'd be a good thing. However, I've not seen anything about it and it would be very strange of them to sneak a release like this out at the same time as Thor.

I suspect that someone found a parcel of old 47.5% stock or some duty free stock and the various stores selling it are actually just affiliate stores that pass people through to the one site that had some. Or it could have been a typo...

If it is a new 47.5% HP21 then I want some :)

@onlyhalfmad - which stores?

Could be right about old stock. If you go to shop4whisky.com (not a site i have used) and check date added its sat 4th feb 2012. Single malts direct, abbey whisky, robbies drams couple more although cant say when they were put up.

It looks like it's a new batch of HP21yo - we just got confirmation from our distributor that it's just been released, although no more informaation.

@Olivier - I'm sorry to have doubted you :)

@cowfish...as @cpstecroix mentioned, the 47.5% HP 21 is in Ontario through the LCBO government monopoly stores. It is bottled at 750 mL, so it's not old travel retail stock (those come exclusively in 1 litre bottles, correct??). I tried a sample at the London (Ontario) Food & Wine Show last month. I still prefer the HP 18, especially at $140 instead of $290!!

Here's the link to the stock listing for the 21:

http://www.lcbo.com/lcbo-ear/lcbo/product/inventory/searchResults.do?language=EN&itemNumber=260216

@Pudge72 ...also, the 18 is a 750 mL bottle (albeit @ 43%) while the 21 apparently is a 700 mL bottle (as per the LCBO link, though they have been known to be inaccurate on the website at times...I have seen the 21 bottles, but didn't think to look to see the bottle size for myself).

@Pudge72 I'm assuming the stuff in Ontario is either old regular stock from before they dropped the ABV to 40% or that the US and Canada didn't get the drop to 40% and it's just 'regular' stock. If it is a new release HP have kept it very quiet. Then again, I work at TWE and hadn't heard about the new 47.5% stock so it's not like their trumpeting it.

I know that the markups in Canada are big, but at ~£100 in the UK that's about $150 Canadian - is a 2x markup usual? If it's more of a markup than normal then it might be old stock that they've just dug out...

@cowfish, I don't mean to answer for my friend Pudge, but, yes, 2x markups are very normal in Ontario!

At the risk of taking the thread even more OT...I just found a few threads on WhiskyWhiskyWhisky talking about the joys of Ontario and the calculation they use is described as 'Zunak's Ratio' after Zunak on www - Divide the LCBO price in $ by the TWE price in £ and if it's less than 2.5 then it's a good deal :)

@cowfish...my good friend Victor is quite correct...the LCBO mark-up is quite substantial a lot of the time (Bowmore, Glenfarclas, and Glenfiddich seem to have some exceptions to the rule). The Zunak ratio 'good' threshold you mention is set at 2.5 (instead of 2.0) as the ratio does not incorporate a currency exchange between the British and Canadian prices.

As I live near the border between the state of Michigan (which publishes their minimum pricing list for liquor on their government website) and Ontario, I apply a 1.5 ratio between Michigan minimum prices and the LCBO as a general, though flexible, gauge of 'acceptable' pricing for product in Ontario that is also available in Michigan.

Back to the Thor.....

I was at a blind tasting on friday night and this whisky was there Everyone agreed it was a great whisky. If you can see past the fact it is "only" 16 years old and has a £120 price tag you will find that it is a very big whisky. People think nothing of spending £70 on an eight year old Port Charlotte. It is only natural to pay more for better quality. I now have a bottle and if you didn't know you would swear it was closer to 21 years than 16.

I've picked ut a bottle of "Thor" today on my way home from work, and honestly I don't care that much for the price when the product and the casing with this wodden viking-ship that the bottle stands in is quite astonishing. Honestly I think it's lovely and really cool :-) ... Maybe thats just me..??

And me as a swedish guy, who quite like the history and tales around the legendery norse gods. And this one together with the three to come in coming years will make a quite cool line -up in my cabinet.

I must dissapoint you guys though, because I won't be able to give you any tasting -notes on this one, though I've promised myself to save these until I have all 4.

May be a quite special tasting-session in 4 years time when I will be able to crack all 4 open on the same evening, don't you think ?? :-)

Happy easter guys.