An island distillery with a smuggler in its founding story.

Highland Park is a single malt Scotch whisky distilled in Kirkwall, the main town of Orkney, the island group off the north coast of mainland Scotland. Despite the name, it is not a Highland whisky in any geographical sense: English Wikipedia, citing the drinks writer Kara Newman in Wine Enthusiast, says the name refers to the “High Park” area on the edge of the town where the distillery stands.

The brand dates itself to 1798, and its founding story is a piece of island legend. As retold by VinePair in 2018, a butcher and church officer named Magnus Eunson was caught distilling illegally on the site that year. The distillery did not receive an official licence until 1826, nearly three decades later, according to the same account. The 1798 date is the one the brand has built its anniversaries around: in February 2023 The Drinks Business reported the release of a 54-year-old whisky to mark Highland Park’s 225th anniversary.

The ownership of the twentieth century is better documented. The records of the Highland Distilleries Company, held by Glasgow University Archives and described on the Archives Hub, say that in 1937 James Grant & Co, hit by the recession, sold the Highland Park distillery to Highland Distilleries Co Ltd. The distillery carried on as a subsidiary under the Grant name, and the archive notes that Highland Park whisky was an ingredient of the Cutty Sark blend that Highland Distilleries was then producing for export.

In 1999 the Glasgow group Edrington, in partnership with William Grant & Sons, took over Highland Distillers, English Wikipedia says, and Highland Park has been part of Edrington ever since. Edrington’s voting shares are owned by The Robertson Trust, a Scottish charity set up in 1961 by the Robertson sisters, and its single malts today are Highland Park, The Macallan and The Glenrothes.

From a 1970s label to a stave church in Norway.

Highland Park’s packaging was redesigned in 2008 and again in 2017. The Dieline reported in October 2008 that the brand’s previous packaging, created in the late 1970s by a London agency, had no genuine Orcadian roots, and that the new design returned to colours and patterns based on first-hand research into the islands’ heritage.

The second change came in 2017. Packaging Insights reported in April 2017, and the Scottish trade paper SLTN in May, that the core range was moving to a wider bottle with heavy embossing, a metallic label carrying a contemporary logo, and a carton with an embossed metallic illustration of a legend in which a lion fights serpent-like dragons, with the words “Made with Pride on Orkney” on its side. The inspiration, the company said, was the carved wooden stave church at Urnes in Norway, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Brand director Jason Craig told SLTN the changes were meant to underline Highland Park’s credentials as an “Orkney single malt with Viking soul,” and told Packaging Insights the team needed a bottle and carton that would “explain our Viking bloodline.”

The core whiskies also gained names. Both trade titles reported that the 12-year-old became Viking Honour and the 18-year-old Viking Pride; Whisky Advocate wrote in May 2017 that the names were drawn from the Vikings’ “nine noble virtues,” and that the brand was dropping its Dark Origins bottling and phasing out the 15-year-old. Orkney was under Norse rule until 1468, when the islands were pledged to the Scottish crown.

The same year brought Valkyrie, the first of three Viking Legend special editions, made by master whisky maker Gordon Motion; SLTN reported that its packaging was designed by the Danish designer Jim Lyngvild, whom the brand described as an expert in Norse mythology.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Scotch single malts: Glenmorangie, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Talisker, Ardbeg, The Dalmore and Highland Park. Single malt brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from distilleries that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a hotel bar.

A single malt brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, rebuilt its distillery or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its whisky is actually distilled, matured and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its whisky is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Peat, sherry casks and a name worth defending.

The whisky itself leans on two materials that the brand talks about often. Wine Enthusiast, as cited by English Wikipedia, says Highland Park uses local peat with a higher proportion of heather than many other peats, and matures its whisky in sherry-seasoned casks of American and European oak bought from oloroso sherry producers in Spain. The company says it cuts that peat on Hobbister Moor, near the distillery, and malts part of its own barley on traditional floors.

Competition results followed the range. English Wikipedia, citing the published results, says The Light and The Dark each won Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2018, and that Highland Park took the Ultimate Spirits Challenge Chairman’s Trophy for its category for a fourth straight year in 2019.

One of the newer names brought a legal dispute. In November 2019 the Washington, DC, distiller Jos. A. Magnus & Co sued Highland Distillers in the US District Court for the District of Columbia over the use of “Magnus” on a Highland Park whisky sold in the United States, alleging trademark infringement and false designation of origin, Scottish Financial News and Whisky Advocate reported; a Highland Park spokesman said the matter had been passed to its lawyers.

Edrington’s portfolio has also narrowed around its malts. In September 2024 Edrington agreed to sell The Famous Grouse to William Grant & Sons; the UK Competition and Markets Authority cleared the deal in March 2025 and it completed in July 2025, so the blend that long shared an owner with Highland Park now sits with the Glenfiddich family company instead.

For a design guide, Highland Park shows how an island distillery can turn its place and its Norse past into packaging, with embossed glass, a carved-church motif and virtue names doing the work a plain age statement once did alone. Compare The Macallan, its Speyside stablemate at Edrington, and Talisker, another island single malt. For this guide we use Orkney slate, peat brown and cask amber with a carved capital serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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