Whisky and winter go hand in hand, I often think, and no better way to kick off talking about Scotland’s Orkney Islands than by discussing Orcadian whisky! Did you know there are TWO distilleries in Orkney? They are both located on the mainland but are vastly different.
Orcadian whisky
So, two whisky distilleries, two totally different tastes, and two totally different ways to go about learning about Orcadian whisky. The first recorded evidence of whisky in Scotland is around 1495, so we can assume that whisky was being distilled by the 15th century. That’s of course on the mainland Scotland, not the isles. Highland Park Distillery, the first in Orkney, was founded in 1798. While you’d assume that the Highland part of the name refers to the Scottish Highlands, in fact it refers to the location of the distillery. It is on a “high land” in Kirkwall. The second distillery, Scapa Distillery, dates to the late 19th century. It changed hands a few times before finally being acquired by Hiram Walker (now Pernod Ricard).
Learning about Orcadian whisky
Both distilleries offer tours, which is great as they are (as already mentioned) totally different styles of Orcadian whisky. Highland Park, which scored 100% on a taste test in 1984, malts its own barley, one of the few to still do so. They use locally cut peat to do so, and again are one of the few to do so. Scapa, by comparison, buys their malt from elsewhere, as do most other distilleries.
The tours, though, cover a lot of the same stuff. If you’ve ever done a whisky tour at Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, or another distillery, you’ll see the similarities. They talk about their process, from the malting to the aging. Whisky must be aged in oak casks, however those can be sherry casks, port casks, or even red wine casks. This must be noted on the bottle though. (There’s a LOT that goes into Scotch, from the terms that are allowed on the bottle to how you determine the age of a whisky. See this informative page for more details.)
Both Scapa and Highland Park offer tours of varying depths. Private tours are also available. I did a tour at HP several years ago and found it to be one of the best distillery tours I’ve ever been on. I sent my parents on one of the Scapa tours earlier this year, and they loved it! They had the chance to pull their own dram straight from a cask (and brought me back a few samples).
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Scotland’s Orkney Islands are fascinating! I’ll be sharing a bit more in detail this week about this remote destination!
