Highland Park recently said that they can’t sustain the high strength of the current Highland Park 21 years old, because it was very popular and stocks at that alcohol level are limited (do they really have difficulty finding 20+ year old casks over 47,5% – hard to believe). They will be lowering the strength to 40%.
In fact, they say they had already changed the whisky that won the World Whisky Awards this year, although there’s actually no proof of that. Why doesn’t the WWA jury publish the full details of the winners, just to avoid these kind of problems?
Also, Highland Park doesn’t mention a price reduction for the 21yo, so the lower volume could easily be seen as a disguised price increase. Sad news!