Nose: Light smoke. Hint of new make but in a nice way. Mild toffee and heather honey. Highland Park allright, but a little light.
Mouth: Fits the nose. Sweet and honeyed at first. Then a light spicy kick. Even some hint of dried fruits and fresh white fruits like honey melon. Slight smoke and bitterness towards the end.
Finish: Rather short. A little spiciness lingers on for a short while.  Then some bitter notes that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
All in all a rather acceptable entry malt, but nothing you will remember for long. I will properly use this to warm up my taste buds for more challenging and interesting malts.

Extremely simple, pleasant, with the aroma of honey, haze and baked apples, the taste is barely sweet, very soft, with hints of caramel, vanilla and slightly smoked dried fruit, the finish is delicate, short, fruity-malt with a bit of haze.
Some kind of "girlish" release, too soft and unprepossessing, although not completely devoid of the HP profile. But I would say no rather than yes.

RATING: 80pts - [n20, t20, f20, b20] → | 80-82: Ordinary |

Immediately after pouring out honey and orange, hardly any peat. Salty and herbal notes come with a little oxygen.
First sweet in the mouth then strong spicy.
Despite 40% vol. pushes the malt properly and lasts a long time.
Wow, what a pleasant surprise.
+ 1 PER point

I went through a few bottles of this six years ago from the old livery and found them a decent budget option. Nose - light peat and honey, but all very light with little jumping out at me. On the palette, you get those trademark HP notes of heather, honey and light peat. It’s all very clear and straight as an arrow, with minimal sherry influence. The finish has some surprising heft of dry smoke and sweet honey. I have to say I am enjoying this more than a recent bottle I had of HP12, which I found very discordant (perhaps a bad batch?) in its sherry/peat mix. It’s a shame this 10yo is only bottled at 40% abv, though it certainly punches above its weight a bit. For a budget single malt, you could do a lot worse than this. Frankly between this bottle and the rather enjoyable Magnus, Highland Park is doing a fine job of putting solid budget options on the market. Well done!