The New Look of Highland Park

I love Highland Park Whisky, and wrote about my tour of the distillery back in November of 2013. During my time in Scotland, I tried to make a point of sampling a lot of whiskies, particularly during several outings to The Grill. Partly because it was Orcadian, but largely because I liked the taste, I became a regular consumer of Highland Park's twelve-year-old whisky... Well, by "regular consumer," I mean that when I drink whisky, which is increasingly rare, that's the whisky that I usually drink.

Last week, I heard on Around Orkney that Highland Park is re-branding. For years, they've played up Orkney's Viking heritage. Rumor has it that the Asian market doesn't really know what to make of the Vikings, and the interview (with someone who clearly wasn't Orcadian) also mentioned efforts to market Highland Park to women. The result is some of the most uninspired packaging I've probably ever seen. You can check it out here. The claim is that the new look emphasizes "Orkney heather," but I'm hard-pressed to see how the new look relates to heather generally, or Orkney heather specifically. It looks like it could be any old alcohol bottle, and reminds me of the sort of thing you'd see in Mad Men, where the actual brand of whisky was rarely (never?) even mentioned.

This is a disappointment. In 2017, when leaving the East Coast to get married back on the West Coast, I had to bin many empty bottles of Highland Park that I'd saved up during the preceding three years. I've collected a few since moving home, and at this point, I'll have to make sure that I retain at least a couple for the duration.

Alex Salmond is Dead

Alex Salmond, former Scottish First Minister and champion of Scotland's secession movement, has died. All of the following news links are from the BBC.

Salmond family pay tribute to 'devoted and loving' man

'Time stopped' after Salmond collapsed at conference

Alex Salmond: Champion of independence leaves a fractured political legacy

Key moments of Alex Salmond's career... in 107 seconds

Alex Salmond obituary: A man and a politician of contradictions

Scotland's former First Minister Alex Salmond dies age 69

Tom Hunter pays for plane to bring Alex Salmond's body home

Salmond's body to be brought home on private flight

Alex Salmond's body arrives back in Scotland

It's vulgar to speak ill of the dead, but personally, I won't miss him. This is my favorite photo of him: dejected, after his asinine secession referendum lost by a solid margin.

Alex Salmond was dishonest, and fought tirelessly for a change of affairs that would have left Scotland politically, economically, and culturally weak. Oh, yeah, and he once got kicked off of a British Airways flight because he attempted to travel under the pseudonym "James Kirk" instead of his real name. I won't miss him, at all.